Anthropic halts access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models after US government order
Anthropic has been forced to suspend access to its powerful AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 following a Trump administration directive citing national security concerns, though the company disagrees with the reasoning.
AI company Anthropic has announced it will comply with a US government directive banning foreign nationals from using its latest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, due to national security concerns. The order applies to foreign nationals both inside and outside the United States, including the company's foreign employees.
In a blog post late Friday evening, Anthropic stated it received a letter from the government at 5:21 PM ET requiring immediate suspension of access to the models. "The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance," the company wrote. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.
The company apologized for the disruption and said it is working to restore access as soon as possible. Anthropic believes authorities became aware of a potential method to jailbreak the Fable 5 model. An AI jailbreak occurs when hackers exploit vulnerabilities to bypass ethical guidelines and perform restricted actions.
Anthropic downplayed the issue, describing the vulnerabilities as "relatively simple" and noting that publicly available models were able to identify them. While complying with the directive, the company disagreed that "a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people." Anthropic also emphasized that it had developed "strong safeguards that greatly reduce the likelihood that Fable is misused for tasks related to cybersecurity."
Reacting to the news on X, Jordan Bardella, a Member of the European Parliament and president of France's far-right National Rally party, said the move was a stark reminder that artificial intelligence is a "major issue of national sovereignty." He added, "Nations that do not quickly develop their own model(s) will always depend more and more on the choices of other powers: France must accelerate its support for the gem Mistral AI and the entire AI ecosystem."
This is not the first clash between Anthropic and the Trump administration. In February, Trump directed US federal agencies to immediately stop using Anthropic's technology after CEO Dario Amodei and his firm objected to its use for certain defense purposes. "We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!" Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time, mentioning a six-month phase-out period. Anthropic later announced legal action after the government designated the company a "supply chain risk."
