Trump administration orders Anthropic to suspend access to two of its AI models citing 'national security'

Anthropic announced that on Friday it suspended access to two of its artificial intelligence (AI) models to comply with an order from the Trump administration citing "national security" concerns.

Just three days after publicly launching Fable 5, the company stated in a post on its website that it had received a government directive prohibiting all foreign nationals from accessing this model and Mythos 5 on "national security" grounds. The order even extends to Anthropic’s foreign employees.

"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 stated in the release.

Anthropic says it does not know exactly what the problem is

The company said that the letter it received, without clarifying which department or agency had sent it, did not specify exactly what was concerning the government. However, its "understanding is that the government believes it has discovered a method to circumvent the restrictions, or 'unlock,' the Fable 5 model in such a way that it could facilitate hacking activities."

Fable 5, released on Tuesday, is a restricted version of Mythos 5. It is an AI model that Anthropic has kept out of the public’s reach, due to concerns that it has “unprecedented capabilities” to identify software vulnerabilities, or flaws in the code that hackers could exploit. Mythos 5, the unrestricted model, has only been made available to select companies.

Anthropic stated that it had revised the "unlocking" method at the center of the speculation and the vulnerabilities it exposed, but did not believe that Mythos 5 grants hackers capabilities not already available through other public models.

The latest in a long line of disagreements between Anthropic and the government

"We disagree that the discovery of a potential limited unlock should be grounds for withdrawing a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people," the company said.

However, the company believes "that this is a misunderstanding and we are working to restore access as soon as possible."

Anthropic has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Trump administration after the president ordered the termination of all federal contracts with the company and prohibited employees from using its software following a major disagreement over the terms of use.