The Anthropic logo is seen in an illustration photo. Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Anthropic said on June 30 that it received notice that the U.S. Commerce Department has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models, weeks after access to them was suspended due to security concerns.
“We’ll begin restoring access tomorrow, and will share an update soon,” the AI company said in a post on X.
“We’re grateful to our users for their patience, and to everyone who worked with us on redeploying the models,” it added.
The Commerce Department informed Anthropic of the change in a letter obtained by Reuters. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in the letter that a license was no longer required to export the Mythos or Fable models.
“Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the U.S. government of any malicious activity,” Lutnick said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Commerce Department for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Anthropic has described Mythos 5 as having the “strongest cybersecurity capabilities of any model in the world.” The model shares the same foundation as Fable 5, but has certain safeguards lifted; Fable 5 was designed for general use, the company said on its website.
Access to both models was suspended on June 12 after the government issued an export control directive barring their use by foreign nationals, including Anthropic employees who are noncitizens.
Anthropic said at the time that the government believed it had identified a method of jailbreaking Fable 5. Jailbreaking is the process of exploiting vulnerabilities to circumvent a software’s built-in safety guardrails.
On June 26, the company announced on social media that the government had authorized it to redeploy Mythos 5 to “a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers.”
Lutnick said in a letter to Anthropic that he has determined that “appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos 5 model.”
“Since the issuance of my June 12 letter, Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the covered models. These efforts have yielded significant progress,” he wrote.
The Pentagon designated Anthropic as a supply-chain risk in March after the company refused to change the user policy for its Claude model to grant the government unrestricted access, citing concerns that the technology could be used for mass surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon said in February that it had no intention to use AI for such purposes and that it only asked Anthropic to allow it to use Claude models for “all lawful purposes.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
