Anthropic has said it will not back down in a fight with the US Department of Defense (DoD) over how its artificial intelligence (AI) technology is used.

The firm's chief executive Dario Amodei said on Thursday that his company would rather not work with the Pentagon than agree to uses of its tech that may "undermine, rather than defend, democratic values."

His comments come two days after a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over demands that Anthropic accept "any lawful use" of its tools. It ended with a threat to remove Anthropic from the DoD's supply chain.

"These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request," Amodei said.

At issue for Anthropic is the potential use of its AI tools like Claude for two purposes: "Mass domestic surveillance" and "Fully autonomous weapons."