P: Assisted Culling popup locks application

I would like to point out that I have the latest version installed and this issue has not been resolved. The only difference is that instead of freezing lightroom and then closing it after 10 minutes, it just shuts it down completely after less than a minute...still not culling. Middle of the busy season, this needs to be priority 1.

When opening LRC, I enter Library, select the folder where my photos are and click assisted cull from the bar at the top. It starts the cull, and less than a minute into the process it crashes LRC. I have tried to import and then cull, same thing happens. I have reset all preferences, it changes nothing. I have uninstalled and re-installed LRC, no difference.

For this to happen in the middle of the busy season is unforgiveable. Adobe should be working around the clock to fix this issue, but I’m seeing nothing, not even a message to say they are working on it. Fuming doesn't cover how I'm feeling right now.

My situation:

• Lightroom Classic 15.5
• macOS Tahoe 26.6
• Mac Studio M4 Max, 36 GB unified memory
• Sony a7R V, 61 MP RAW
• Untouched RAW: ~2.5 GB combined Lightroom cache
• Denoise/AI-edited RAW: ~17 GB combined cache
• Lightroom retains the ~17 GB processed image after navigating to another photo
• GPU allocation rose as high as 28.45 / 28.75 GB (98%)
• Swap reached 11.86 GB
• Entire macOS UI became extremely sluggish
• Fresh 10-photo catalog reproduced the large allocation after Denoise + AI mask
• Main catalog can allocate ~23 GB immediately after opening, before making new edits
• GPU Preview Generation OFF
• HDR Library OFF
• Same workflow performed normally until recently

This is still occurring in Lightroom Classic 15.5, even though 15.5 contains fixes related to excessive memory usage. My reproduction does not require Assisted Culling. Denoise + AI masking on 61 MP Sony RAW files is sufficient to trigger extremely high GPU/unified-memory allocation.