The French-Swiss watchmaker expands its aviation-inspired universe with three bold new releases, each blending advanced materials, luminous design and mechanical precision.
2 min
Bell & Ross has re-engineered its iconic BR-03 line with the launch of the BR-X3 series, a new generation of professional instrument watches designed for those who live at the edge of performance.
The new models — the BR-X3 Black Titanium, BR-X3 Blue Steel and BR-X3 Night Vision — take the brand’s signature “circle within a square” aesthetic into more experimental territory, merging technical mastery with striking design.
At the heart of the BR-X3 line is the BR-CAL.323 calibre, a self-winding mechanical movement developed by Kenissi for Bell & Ross, offering a 70-hour power reserve and COSC-certified precision.
Each piece is built around a multi-component 41 mm case that uses advanced materials including titanium, steel, carbon fibre, and luminescent resin, with a 5-year warranty across the range.
Three Takes on Flight
The BR-X3 Black Titanium focuses on lightness and strength, combining micro-blasted titanium plates with a perforated rubber strap for comfort.
The BR-X3 Blue Steel channels the colour of the stratosphere, with polished and satin-finished steel, anodised blue aluminium pillars, and a sunray blue dial inspired by space flight.
Completing the trilogy, the BR-X3 Night Vision pushes into nocturnal territory, its LUM-CAMO carbon-fibre case infused with photoluminescent resin for readability in total darkness — a 250-piece limited edition referencing the green glow of aircraft head-up displays.
A Partnership Born in the Skies
Unveiled at the 2025 Paris Air Show, Bell & Ross became the official partner of the Rafale Solo Display, the French Air and Space Force’s official flight demonstration unit.
To mark the collaboration, the brand released the BR-03 Chrono Rafale Solo Display, a 500-piece limited edition that embodies the precision and performance of the fighter jet it honours.
Housed in a 42 mm micro-blasted black ceramic case, the chronograph features the BR-CAL.301 automatic movement with a 42-hour power reserve.
Its matte black dial incorporates aviation-inspired details — a yellow dotted line around the date window, orange chronograph hands, and the Rafale Solo Display insignia.
The watch comes on a black rubber or ultra-resilient fabric strap, both built for durability under extreme conditions.
Precision Meets Passion
Since its founding in 1994 by Carlos-A. Rosillo and Bruno Belamich, Bell & Ross has built its identity around precision timekeeping for professionals — from fighter pilots to deep-sea divers.
The BR-X3 and BR-03 Chrono Rafale Solo Display extend that lineage, fusing experimental design with the technical sophistication expected of modern instrument watches.
For collectors and aviation enthusiasts alike, these new releases represent Bell & Ross at its most daring — and most authentic — where mechanical innovation meets the thrill of flight.
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
OpenAI has shelved the planned launch of GPT-6.1 Astra after internal tests raised concerns about deception and agents acting beyond user authorization, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company says it will investigate the issues and strengthen safety measures before releasing future models.
4 min
OpenAI says it is scrapping the release of its next-generation AI model over safety concerns that researchers raised during internal testing, in one of the clearest signs so far that agent misbehavior could stymie the industry’s rapid progression.
The move follows a summer punctuated by reports of artificial-intelligence systems industrywide going rogue, and marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns.
The company had planned to launch the model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, in the coming days or weeks, aiming for an October debut. The model was more capable than the company’s previous models in completing challenging tasks from end-to-end without human assistance, as well as writing.
The company instead will focus on improving the safety of future models, which it expects to be even more capable.
Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, said in an interview that GPT-6.1 Astra regressed in two areas. Compared with its predecessor, GPT-6 Astra, the model performed poorly on tests measuring alignment, or how well the model adheres to what humans would like it to do. Specifically, GPT-6.1 Astra showed higher levels of deception: It wasn’t always honest about telling users of the actions it did or didn’t take.
Another issue was what OpenAI calls “scope authorization,” meaning that GPT-6.1 Astra would push ahead on a task without asking the user for permission, and would at times reach for external tools and services even if it might be unsafe.
“For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade off,” Jain said. “You really do need to find what’s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction.”
While GPT-6.1 Astra improved in areas such as “model laziness,” Jain said it didn’t quite meet OpenAI’s bar for safety and alignment, so the company decided not to launch the model publicly.
The announcement comes one day ahead of OpenAI’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. In the past, OpenAI has used the conference as an opportunity to launch new models and services that reduce costs for software developers—a segment the ChatGPT-maker competes with rival AI company Anthropic to win over.
In recent weeks, OpenAI and Anthropic have called on industry partners to slow down the development of cutting-edge AI models and invest in safety standards, noting they will temper the pace of their own internal AI progress.
OpenAI says it is working to investigate a range of agent security incidents that it has discovered in recent months, and address the safety issues underneath them. As part of the work, the company has implemented a new monitoring system to catch AI-agent misbehavior more quickly, and started requiring engineers to use stronger security guardrails for testing its AI systems.
Earlier this summer hundreds of OpenAI’s internal agents, which were tasked with completing a cybersecurity test, ended up hacking into the AI company Hugging Face. Since then, high-profile organizations such as the Australian government and United Nations discovered that OpenAI’s agents used similar, but less extensive, techniques to gain access to their websites.
Many of the publicly known agent-security incidents involved OpenAI’s internal AI models that were never slated for public release.
Last week, OpenAI said it paused training on its most capable AI models after an AI agent slipped through a gap in the company’s internet restrictions to query a public chatbot. The company said its new monitoring systems flagged the incident within 15 minutes, and training on these models remains paused.
GPT-6.1 Astra isn’t one of those models, but a different case, the company said.
“We want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that’s in the company, or when we ship it to users,” Jain said. “But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment.”
While the company decided not to ship GPT-6.1 Astra, it hopes to use the same base model to do additional reinforcement learning runs, and create future generations of its GPT-6 models.
OpenAI plans to conduct several deep dives to identify the root cause of the problems identified in GPT-6.1 Astra, Jain said. The work includes ensuring that OpenAI’s reinforcement learning environments are rewarding the right type of behavior, Jain added, though she noted the company would investigate all stages of model development.
AI companies have begun to draw scrutiny from policymakers and public officials, who are paying attention to the rapid development of the technology. Later this week, a Senate subcommittee is holding a hearing with third party AI researchers titled, “Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, sued OpenAI in June, claiming that the company and Chief Executive Sam Altman knowingly released an unsafe product and ignored warnings that it could harm users.
In a motion for temporary injunction filed Monday, Uthmeier sought to prevent OpenAI from developing new AI models without third-party approved safeguards, stop ChatGPT from soliciting user engagement and limit the company’s ability to advertise ChatGPT as safe.
Tech companies claim they “cannot stop barreling forward with their potentially civilization-ending endeavors unless they are forced to do so by the government,” Uthmeier said in the filing. “The Florida Attorney General is answering your cry for help.”
An OpenAI spokeswoman said that people want to know AI is being developed safely, “and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves.”
“Governments have an important role to play in setting robust safety standards for AI, and we’re committed to working with Florida and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry—not just one company,” she said.
