New Delhi: US-based AI company Anthropic disabled access to its two most advanced models—Fable 5 and Mythos 5—for all users outside the US and foreign nationals even in the US Friday evening. This came after the US government issued an export control directive barring foreign nationals from the tools over national security concerns—the first time a leading AI company has taken a publicly deployed model offline due to federal government intervention.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent a letter to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Friday, stating that Mythos 5 and Fable 5 would be subject to export controls in any location outside the US and to all foreign persons within the country. The restrictions apply even to Anthropic’s own foreign employees. Any export, re-export, or transfer of the models within the US now requires an individual licence.Anthropic said in a statement that it received the directive at 5.21 pm ET and that the letter offered no specifics. “The letter did not provide specific details of its national security concern,” the company wrote. Because it could not selectively block foreign nationals in real time across a shared cloud service, it disabled both models for every customer globally. All other Anthropic models remain unaffected.
