The Donald Trump-led US government has finally allowed Anthropic to release its Claude Mythos 5 AI model to “trusted partners” in the country, according to a Commerce Department letter seen by various media publications.
According to WIRED, the letter was sent by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Anthropic’s co-founder and chief compute officer, Tom Brown. In the letter, he said that the US would permit some trusted partners to access Mythos because he had “determined that appropriate safeguards are in place.”
“Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the Covered Models. These efforts have yielded significant progress,” was quoted as saying.
According to a report citing sources, more than 100 companies and institutions will now gain access to Mythos 5, including many Fortune 500 companies.
“Since the issuance of my June 12 letter, Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the Covered Models. These efforts have yielded significant progress,” Lutnick wrote
In his letter, Lutnick reportedly wrote that organisations approved to use can also allow their foreign employees to access the model, and Anthropic can do the same for its foreign employees.
Notably, the decision by the US government comes just a day after OpenAI was reportedly asked to stagger the release of its upcoming model by first releasing it to a shortlist of government-approved partners.
Why was Mythos banned?
The partial lifting of the ban on Mythos comes just two weeks after the Trump administration directed Anthropic to limit access to its most powerful AI models over national security concerns.
Reportedly, the US government issued the export control directive after finding out that Anthropic had granted access to Mythos to a South Korean telecommunications company that it believed had ties to China. The report also notes that Amazon and the US National Security Agency separately raised concerns that Fable 5 could potentially be jailbroken.
Since then, Anthropic has reportedly deployed senior members of its cybersecurity and AI safety teams to Washington to get Mythos 5 and Fable 5 back on track.
While Mythos 5 is back on track for rollout, there is no news yet on the consumer-facing version of Mythos. The WIRED report notes that Anthropic is still in discussions with the White House to restore access to Fable 5, and these discussions are expected to continue over the weekend.
Anthropic on access to Mythos being restored
Anthropic confirmed to WIRED that Mythos 5 will once again be available to a small group of trusted cyber defenders and infrastructure providers.
“We received notice from the US government that Mythos 5, our strongest cybersecurity model, can be redeployed to a small group of cyber defenders and infrastructure providers,” Anthropic spokesperson Eduardo Maia Silva told the publication.
“We are working to provision the approved set of providers and restore their access to Mythos 5 as quickly as possible. We are pleased to see this progress and continue to work with the government to expand access to Mythos 5 and make Fable 5 available for general use again,” Silva added.