OpenAI’s latest models have “meaningfully” increased the risk that artificial intelligence will be misused to create biological weapons, the company has acknowledged.

The San Francisco-based company announced its new models, known as o1, on Thursday, touting their new abilities to reason, solve hard maths problems and answer scientific research questions. These advances are seen as a crucial breakthrough in the effort to create artificial general intelligence — machines with human-level cognition.

OpenAI’s system card, a tool to explain how the AI operates, said the new models had a “medium risk” for issues related to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons — the highest risk that OpenAI has ever given for its models. The company said it meant that the technology has “meaningfully improved” the ability of experts to create bioweapons.