The U.S. government ordered Anthropic to block foreign citizens from accessing its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models, citing national security concerns.
8:04 PM
Anthropic announced Friday that the U.S. government had ordered the company to suspend access to its two most advanced artificial intelligence models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all foreign citizens, citing national security grounds.
The directive came from the Department of Commerce in the form of a letter received Friday evening. The order applies to foreign citizens both inside and outside the United States, and extends to foreign employees of Anthropic itself, preventing them from accessing the models they helped develop.
Anthropic stated in an official announcement that the government's letter did not specify the precise reasons for the national security concern. However, the company indicated it understood that authorities believed they had discovered a method to circumvent or bypass the security safeguards built into Fable 5. "Today we received the directive from the government. The letter did not specify the reasons for their national security concern. We understand that the government believes it has discovered a method to circumvent, or unlock, Fable 5," Anthropic said.
The suspension came only three days after Anthropic had publicly launched Fable 5. The company stated that it had no technical means to filter users based on nationality and therefore had to immediately deactivate both models for all customers to ensure compliance with the order. "The effect of this order is that we must immediately disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our users to ensure compliance," the company declared.
Anthropic defended the security measures already in place on the models, noting that Fable 5 had strict safeguards designed to reduce the risk of misuse in cybersecurity tasks. The company criticized the White House for providing only short notice of the directive.
The order represents an unusual instance of federal authorities directly dictating how a private company must operate. It also marks the most stringent action taken by the Trump administration to restrict access to advanced AI models, despite previous statements and executive orders indicating the U.S. would not impose a licensing regime for model evaluations.
The duration of the restrictions remains unclear. The suspension adds to an already tense relationship between Anthropic and the federal government.
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