Anthropic rankles users with safety-first Fable release

Tech NewsAnthropic rankles users with safety-first Fable releaseThe AI company’s newest public model was met with strong backlash over stringent safety rules and refusals to help users, though others described the measures as “reasonable.”Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, right, and Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger in 2025 in San Francisco.Don Feria / AP Content Services for Anthropic fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 11, 2026, 6:26 PM EDTBy Jared PerloAnthropic’s latest AI model might be the company’s most powerful public release, but the system’s strict safety measures quickly triggered some of the strongest backlash the AI giant has faced.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Many users, some of whom have marveled at Anthropic’s previous announcements, torched the company for debuting its Fable 5 model on Tuesday with what they say are overly stringent guardrails. In some cases, when the model classified a query as potentially sensitive, it would provide a lower-quality answer without informing the user of the downgrade.After the outcry, Anthropic backtracked and reversed some of its most conservative decisions less than two days after Fable 5’s release, highlighting growing concerns about AI companies’ ability to unilaterally limit users’ access to helpful AI-generated information.“You should have visibility into the safeguards we have in place, and why. We’re sorry for not getting the balance right,” Anthropic wrote on X early Thursday.Nathan Lambert, a leading AI researcher who champions collaborative approaches to building AI systems, wrote that with the cautious debut, “Anthropic has made it pretty clear that they only trust themselves as the mediators of cutting-edge AI research.”Anthropic’s Fable 5 system is the first consumer-facing system from Anthropic’s Mythos family of models. An early, nonpublic version of Mythos spooked policymakers and co...