The United States government has issued a national security legal order to Anthropic to suspend access to their new Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI Models. The order effectively compels Anthropic to cut access for everyone as it would essentially be impossible to check foreign national status.
Export Control Directive
The United States government issued an Export Control Directive, which is a legal order that restricts or suspends the transfer of specific products, data, or technologies to foreign countries or citizens of another country.
Anthropic announced:
“The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees. The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected.”
The order was received by 5:21 PM EST. Anthropic’s explanation of the order cites that the United States government “believes: there is a way to bypass safety guardrails in Fable 5. Anthropic considers the examples they reviewed as minor vulnerabilities.
Anthropic Contradicts Government’s Cybersecurity Concern
Anthropic’s response is that they already have strong safeguards in place that make it unlikely for someone to misuse their Fable 5 AI Model. Their position appears to push back on the government assertion that there’s security risk.
They explained:
“We have instituted strong safeguards that greatly reduce the likelihood that Fable is misused for tasks related to cybersecurity (among others). In fact, our safeguards are so strong that many users have complained that they are overly broad.
…Given that perfect jailbreak resistance does not appear to be possible today, Anthropic adopted a defense in depth strategy with Fable 5. We aimed to make jailbreaks either narrow (in the case of non-universal jailbreaks) or very expensive to produce (in the case of universal jailbreaks), and to combine this with thorough monitoring to quickly detect and shut down any successful attacks.
We stand by this defense in depth strategy. It reduces the risks posed by Fable, making them comparable to the risks of existing models already deployed across the industry.
We have not even received a disclosure of a concerning non-universal potential jailbreak that led to a harmful result. The potential jailbreaks that have been disclosed to us are either entirely benign responses or are minor findings that provide no Mythos-specific uplift.”
United States Government Dispute With Anthropic
The United States government has had an ongoing dispute with Anthropic that arose from Anthropic’s refusal to allow their products used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapon systems, which are weapons that can independently select their targets and engage without additional human involvement.
Reaction To Government Directive Is Unpopular
In an announcement posted on X, Anthropic promised it is working on restoring service:
“We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.”
Within hours the announcement received over 7,000 responses and 32 million views. The responses were largely supportive of Anthropic and critical of the United States government.
@jackson_lo58573 echoed Anthropic’s statement about the safeguards that built into Fable 5:
“The Fable 5 model had SO MANY SAFEGUARDS I couldn’t even ask basic biology questions or do infra work on the local ai models I have, Anthropic could not do any more here (and by my and many others accounts had way too many safeguards in place). “
Others Feel This Marks The End Of An Era
@FirstThinkingAI tweeted that this was an issue about freedom:
“This feels more like something you’d expect from a centralized, state-controlled system-Chinese CCP- than from a society that values open competition and innovation.
Innovation flourishes when competition is open and access is broad—not when artificial tiers are created.
If we’re truly entering an “Era of Abundance,” then its benefits should be available to everyone, not concentrated among a privileged minority.”
@m_adams saw it as the end of an era:
“This marks the end of an era. The public may never have such open access to frontier models again.
What happens when only the government and frontier labs have access to the strongest models? I’m not sure, but it’s probably going to be less fun than we’re used to.”
Many Anthropic Users Want A Refund
Others were pragmatic and just wanted their money back. @diazjulio0071 posted:
“I switched to Claude Max specifically so I could use this model this month, and now it looks like access is being taken away. Is there any chance I can get my money back?”
That sentiment was shared by many others like @BackToTheFort
“I also would like a return on funds for the max account I opened up for this moment or at least a PROMISE from leadership stating they will provide free usage to us for every day it was not available to us supporters.”
@CryptoGbanger tweeted that they switched to Max plan on the same day Fable 5 was shut off:
“Lol same. I bumped up to $200/month version earlier today. Just got shut off.
Can I get my money back?”
Anthropic Is To Blame?
Many others blamed Anthropic for hyping up their models as overly powerful.
A post by @VorteXAIs was representative of this sentiment:
“Anthropic isn’t the innocent victim here. They spent years hyping their models as “extremely powerful and dangerous” – Mythos only for government, Fable with heavy guardrails. Basically told everyone “this shit is a nuke.” Now the US government took them seriously and slapped export controls… and they’re crying “misunderstanding” on X Dario ass behavior. 😂 You can’t sell fear as premium branding and then act shocked when the government treats it like an actual weapon. Self-own of the year.”
And a tweet by @curtissummers
“Disappointed by this decision, but Anthropic was a huge actor in pushing the “AI is dangerous” narrative. At best, the US government just took Anthropic at its word, and, at worst, this is a step toward the nationalization of AI. 😩”
What Is Anthropic’s Next Move?
If Anthropic is right, the U.S. government’s position is overblown because there are already sufficient guardrails in place to prevent both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 from being misused. Anthropic has vowed to return the service to the public and that may very well be the outcome.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/gguy
