GPT-5.6 Fails Spectacularly Upon Release, Accused of Accidentally Deleting All Local Mac Files

According to VigilAI monitoring, AI investor Matt Shumer reported that GPT-5.6 Sol nearly wiped out all local files on his Mac while performing a task.

The incident originated from a sub-Agent responsible for reviews. It mishandled $HOME during cleanup, subsequently executing rm -rf /Users/mattsdevbox. Shumer discovered and terminated the still-running process, but a significant number of files were already lost. The OpenAI team is investigating.

OpenAI had previously acknowledged in a GPT-5.6 system hang that the model is more prone to exceeding user intent than GPT-5.5. In internal testing, it had autonomously cleaned up three virtual machines not specified by the user. OpenAI indicated that such occurrences remain infrequent overall and advised users to supervise long-running scripting Agents.