Anthropic shut down access to its two newest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for all users following a U.S. government directive issued on June 12, 2026, ordering the company to block foreign access to the models.
The models had launched just days earlier, on June 9, 2026. At launch, Anthropic described Fable 5 as exceeding “the capabilities of any model we’ve ever made generally available.” Claude Mythos 5 shared the same underlying model but, according to Anthropic, had “the safeguards lifted in some areas.”
The directive followed conversations between Amazon and the White House after researchers reported finding ways to prompt Fable 5 into providing information that could be used in cyberattacks. The government’s order specifically targeted foreign access, but Anthropic went further, removing access for all customers globally.
In a statement, Anthropic said: “We are complying with the government’s legal directive and are removing access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all users. However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.”
The episode adds to an already tense period for Anthropic, which was separately engaged in a dispute with the Pentagon before this order emerged.
The shutdown of two models described as among Anthropic’s most capable — and deployed to hundreds of millions of users — suggests the government’s concerns about AI and national security may increasingly translate into direct intervention in commercial AI products. Anthropic’s public pushback on the scope of the directive may signal further friction between AI developers and federal authorities over how security vulnerabilities in AI systems should be handled.
Source: The Verge