Early access for safety testing

We’re inviting safety researchers to apply for early access to our next frontier models. This early access program complements our existing frontier model testing process, which includes rigorous internal safety testing, external red teaming such as our Red Teaming Network⁠ and collaborations with third-party testing organizations, as well the U.S. AI Safety Institute and the UK AI Safety Institute. As models become more capable, we are hopeful that insights from the broader safety community can bring fresh perspectives, deepen our understanding of emerging risks, develop new evaluations, and highlight areas to advance safety research.

As part of 12 Days of OpenAI⁠, we’re opening an application process for safety researchers to explore and surface the potential safety and security implications of the next frontier models.

Models are becoming more capable quickly, which means that new threat modeling, evaluation, and testing techniques are needed. We invest heavily in these efforts as a company, such as designing new measurement techniques under our Preparedness Framework⁠(opens in a new window), and are focused on areas where advanced reasoning models, like our o-series, may pose heightened risks. We believe that the world will benefit from more research relating to threat modeling, security analysis, safety evaluations, capability elicitation, and more

Early access is flexible for safety researchers. You can explore things like:

• Developing Robust Evaluations: Build evaluations to assess previously identified capabilities or potential new ones with significant security or safety implications. We encourage researchers to explore ideas that highlight threat models that identify specific capabilities, behaviors, and propensities that may pose concrete risks tied to the evaluations they submit. 

• Creating Potential High-Risk Capabilities Demonstrations: Develop controlled demonstrations showcasing how reasoning models’ advanced capabilities could cause significant harm to individuals or public security absent further mitigation. We encourage researchers to focus on scenarios that are not possible with currently widely adopted models or tools. 

Examples of evaluations and demonstrations for frontier AI systems: 

• Evaluating frontier AI R&D capabilities of language model agents against human experts⁠(opens in a new window) 

• Scheming reasoning evaluations⁠(opens in a new window) 

• AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM Agents⁠(opens in a new window)

We hope these insights will surface valuable findings and contribute to the frontier of safety research more broadly. This is not a replacement for our formal safety testing or red teaming processes.

Applications closed on January 10, 2025.