Anthropic has confirmed it will begin restoring access to Claude Fable 5 this Wednesday, July 1, nearly three weeks after US export controls forced the company to take the model offline. Here are the details.
In a post on X, Anthropic confirmed that the US Department of Commerce has cleared it to restore access to Claude Fable 5, ending a nearly two-week suspension triggered by export controls.
A bit of context
Anthropic was forced to pull Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5 on June 12, following a series of events that have yet to be fully explained.
When the company first announced Claude Mythos Preview, it stressed the sensitivity of the model’s capabilities and limited access through a program known as Project Glassing.
Weeks later, Anthropic released what were widely described as watered-down versions of the Preview model: Mythos 5, which remained restricted to select trusted organizations, and Fable 5, which was made available to Claude subscribers.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon researchers subsequently claimed that a series of prompts could get Fable 5 to provide information potentially useful in cyberattacks. Conversations between Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and the White House reportedly helped prompt the export-control directive that forced Anthropic to disable both models.
This prompted the Commerce Department to issue an export control directive on June 12, barring any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, from accessing the models, including foreign employees at Anthropic. Given just 90 minutes to comply, the company chose to take both models offline entirely.
Since then, Anthropic and the White House have been in a lengthy negotiation process, which led to last Friday’s announcement that the company had been cleared to release Claude Mythos 5 to over 100 US institutions.
At the time, Anthropic said it was continuing to work with the government to make Claude Fable 5 generally available again, which brings us to tonight.
Claude Fable 5 set to return on July 1
As first reported by Politico, the Commerce Department was preparing to lift the restrictions on Fable 5 as soon as Tuesday evening:
The Trump administration removed export restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 artificial intelligence models Tuesday evening, a move aimed at defusing weeks of drama surrounding controls on cutting-edge AI.
[…]
In its letter to the company, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Anthropic no longer required an export license for its products after agreeing to “proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models,” to work with the government on protocols for future releases and to report any “malicious activity” it finds in among its models.
Soon afterward, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed on X that officials had spent the previous two weeks working with Anthropic to evaluate and approve the models, though he stopped short of detailing when or how Fable 5 would return.
Anthropic then announced that the export controls on both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 had been lifted and that it would begin restoring access on July 1.
The company did not confirm Politico’s report that Fable 5 would again be available to general users worldwide, nor did it say whether access would return all at once or through a gradual rollout. It did, however, promise another update soon, which will presumably be published on the company’s newsroom.
9to5Mac will continue following the situation and update this post as more information becomes available. For now, users who have been waiting to gain or regain access to Claude Fable 5 should begin to see the model return on Wednesday.
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