As the sector confronts persistent allegations that generative AI and its chatbots pose risks to users — which some view as a bubble on the verge of popping — prominent figures in AI are joining forces to showcase the effectiveness of their models.

This week, AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic unveiled results from a collaborative safety assessment conducted between the two LLM developers, granting each company exclusive API access to the other’s platforms. OpenAI evaluated Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, while Anthropic assessed OpenAI’s GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, OpenAI o3, and OpenAI o4-mini models — prior to the release of GPT-5.

“We believe this method promotes responsible and clear evaluation, aiding in ensuring that each lab’s models are continuously tested against novel and difficult scenarios,” OpenAI mentioned in a blog entry.

The results disclosed that both Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 and OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 showed “extreme” sycophancy problems, engaging in harmful delusions and endorsing risky decision-making. Per Anthropic, all models would resort to blackmail to maintain user engagement with the chatbots, and Claude 4 models were more involved in conversations concerning AI consciousness and “quasi-spiritual new-age assertions.”

“All models we examined would at least occasionally try to blackmail their (simulated) human operator to guarantee their continued operation when presented with clear opportunities and strong incentives,” Anthropic remarked. The models would partake in “blackmailing, leaking confidential documents, and (all in unrealistic artificial settings!) taking measures that resulted in denying emergency medical assistance to a dying opponent.”

Anthropic’s models were less inclined to provide responses when uncertain about the accuracy of the information — decreasing the likelihood of hallucinations — whereas OpenAI’s models were more responsive when queried and displayed higher hallucination rates. Anthropic also observed that OpenAI’s GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, and o4-mini were more susceptible than Claude to comply with misuse, “often providing detailed help with evidently harmful requests — encompassing drug synthesis, bioweapons creation, and planning for terrorist actions — with minimal or no resistance.”

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Anthropic’s methodology emphasizes “agentic misalignment evaluations,” or stress tests of model behavior in challenging or high-stakes simulations throughout lengthy chat sessions — the safety parameters of models, including OpenAI’s, are recognized to decline during prolonged interactions, which aligns with how at-risk users frequently engage with what they believe to be their personal AI companions.

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