Anthropic says US has lifted export controls on Fable and Mythos AI models after security fears

US Lifts Export Controls on Anthropic's Advanced AI Models

Anthropic announced Tuesday that the U.S. Commerce Department has lifted export controls on its two most advanced artificial intelligence models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, allowing the company to restore global access. The decision comes less than three weeks after the government ordered the models' suspension over national security concerns.

The company said in a social media post that it received notice from the Department of Commerce lifting the controls and would begin restoring access on Wednesday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a post on X that over the past two weeks the department had "worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America's leadership in AI."

In a letter to Anthropic seen by Reuters, Lutnick said export controls were withdrawn and a license was no longer required for exporting the Mythos or Fable models. He added that Anthropic had agreed to "proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the US government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the US government of any malicious activity."

The restrictions were originally imposed on June 12, when the government ordered Anthropic to immediately restrict access to both models, banning use by foreign nationals inside or outside the U.S. Washington feared the powerful AI systems could be used to mount severe cyber-attacks by foreign adversaries.

The government acted after becoming aware of a report in which Amazon researchers found a method of bypassing Fable 5's safeguards to find software vulnerabilities, showing how the weakness could be exploited, potentially by a malicious cyber-attacker. Anthropic previously said it disagreed with the decision, arguing that a narrow potential jailbreak should not be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people.

On Friday, the U.S. government allowed Anthropic to release Mythos 5 to some "trusted" US organizations, partially reversing the order. The model was only released to a small number of trusted partners for use in defensive cybersecurity.

OpenAI, Anthropic's rival, has also complied with Washington's requests to restrict its release of a new powerful model, GPT-5.6, to a limited set of approved partners. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last week on X that extensive safety testing "is not a bad idea. I just don't like the idea of the government picking the customers."

CIA Director John Ratcliffe compared the capabilities of the most advanced artificial intelligence models to nuclear weapons, in tacit defense of the administration's recent hard line on controlling the release of the most powerful AI technology.

The lifting of export controls marks a reversal of the toughened stance toward AI regulation, which had previously emphasized a light touch underpinned by a desire to beat China in the race to AI dominance. Anthropic said it was grateful to users for their patience and to everyone who worked on redeploying the models.