Anthropic suspends new AI models after government directive

Artificial intelligenceAnthropic suspends new AI models after government directiveThe Commerce Department instructed Anthropic to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for any foreign national, which Anthropic said requires disabling the models entirely. Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00The Anthropic logo can be seen at an event organized by the AI company. Andrej Sokolow / picture alliance via Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 12, 2026, 10:01 PM EDTBy Jared PerloThe U.S. government instructed Anthropic to prevent any foreign national from accessing the AI company’s latest and most powerful models Friday evening, according to the company.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Anthropic, the company behind the popular Claude chatbot, said this directive forced it to disable access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all customers — not just foreign nationals — to comply with the directive.“The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees,” the company wrote in a statement posted online late Friday evening. The letter issuing the directive was sent from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and was written with the help of officials from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, according to an administration official.Anthropic released Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Tuesday, trumpeting the new models as the most powerful AI systems it had ever shared. The company said that these AI models are powerful enough to merit strict safety guardrails to prevent malicious or dangerous use.“Releasing a model this capable comes with risks. Without safeguards, Fable 5’s capabilities in areas like cybersecurity could be misused to cause serious damage,” Anthropic said in its Tuesday...