The European Commission says it is in ongoing discussions with OpenAI and Anthropic to access their latest AI models; OpenAI is “proactively offering” access
Context & Ripple Effects
US safety evaluators had already secured early access commitments from OpenAI and Anthropic, and more recently from Google, Microsoft, and xAI. The Commission’s discussions extend that pre-release-access model to a second major regulator.
The development also sits alongside earlier EU scrutiny of OpenAI over privacy-related issues, making model access a potentially more direct channel for regulatory assessment.
First-order effects
- OpenAI and Anthropic may provide the European Commission access to their latest models, with OpenAI already signaling a willingness to do so proactively.
- The Commission gains a path to assess frontier-model capabilities and risks more directly rather than relying solely on public releases or company disclosures.
Second-order effects
- Access arrangements developed for US evaluators may become a practical template for European oversight, increasing pressure on other leading model providers to offer comparable cooperation.
- Companies operating across the US and EU could face a more coordinated set of pre-release evaluation expectations, raising the importance of internal testing and regulator-ready documentation.
Third-order effects
- If such access becomes routine, frontier-model governance may shift from after-the-fact enforcement toward ongoing regulator visibility before broad deployment.
- The durability of this model will depend on whether regulators can standardize meaningful access without exposing sensitive model details or making oversight dependent on voluntary company cooperation.
The trend: Major AI developers are increasingly being drawn into pre-release safety evaluation arrangements with public authorities across key jurisdictions.