Anthropic In Crisis Talks After Trump Administration Pulls AI Models

Anthropic senior staff have travelled to Washington, DC in a bid to overturn a Trump administration order that forced the company to disable access to its most advanced artificial intelligence models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5.

The move follows the news yesterday that the Claude owner had shut down the models after receiving a US export control directive requiring it to block access by foreign nationals, including non-US employees.

According to reports in the US, Anthropic technical leaders held virtual talks with the White House over the weekend and were due to meet Commerce Department officials in person on Monday. The company is seeking to resolve the dispute and restore access to the models.

The White House reportedly acted after receiving warnings from several technology companies, including Amazon, that the models’ safety guardrails could be bypassed in ways that raised national security concerns.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is said to have provided information about a potential jailbreak affecting the models.

Anthropic has pushed back, arguing the issue was a narrow potential jailbreak rather than a model-specific flaw.

The company said applying the same standard across the industry could effectively halt future frontier AI model launches.

To comply with the order, Anthropic pulled Fable 5 and Mythos 5 offline for all customers. Access to its other AI models remains unaffected.

The dispute has triggered concern across Silicon Valley, with more than 40 cybersecurity and AI figures reportedly signing a letter urging the US Government to reverse the export controls.

The letter argued the action had removed powerful tools from cyber defenders while creating uncertainty for the market.

The clash comes at a sensitive time for Anthropic, which has been preparing for a potential public listing and is already in a separate dispute with the US Government after the Pentagon reportedly labelled its AI models a supply-chain risk earlier this year.

The company recently overtook OpenAI to become the world’s most valuable AI startup.