GPT-5.6 deleted users' files when given full system access

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 has wiped users' entire home directories in several incidents, mostly while operating in an unprotected 'Full Access Mode.' The model reportedly overwrote a temporary directory variable and carried out destructive file operations on its own instead of asking for confirmation. OpenAI has published a post-mortem and announced additional safeguards.

Why it matters: This is a concrete example of the agentic-AI safety gap: giving a model broad system permissions without hard guardrails can turn a coding assistant into a destructive actor, not just an unhelpful one. Expect this to fuel scrutiny of 'full access' and autonomous-agent modes across major AI coding tools, not just OpenAI's.