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The Vergecast · Friday, September 4, 2026

OpenAI Delayed Astra Release Due to Hugging Face Security Incident

Hayden Field stated that OpenAI's new model, Astra, had its release delayed by "a few weeks or a month" due to the Hugging Face security incident. This delay allowed OpenAI to implement more safeguards and conduct further evaluations, testing Astra on areas where previous models like GPT-4 had failed during the hack.

personHayden FieldcompanyOpenAIcompanyHugging FacecompanyGPT-4

The tape

4 quotes
They actually delayed the release of Astra by, what I think is a few weeks or a month due to the hugging face thing.
Hayden Field
So they slowed down training, um, they stopped training altogether for a little while, then they, um, apparently just, you know, really slowed down the release of it.
Hayden Field
They also introduced new evaluations where they kind of tested Astra on the types of things that GPT 4.0 sold, um, would have failed at during the hugging face hack.
Hayden Field
And, um, they said that Astra wasn't the one that hacked hugging face, you know, maybe another release, uh, model or maybe it's some other previous iteration of Astra.
Hayden Field
Heard on The Vergecast — “AGI is whatever you want it to be, published Friday, September 4, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
Transcribed via Gemini audio transcription · $0.09
OpenAI Delayed Astra Release Due to Hugging Face Security Incident — Heardvine