A Four-Day Fable
Only four days after its birth into the big blue AI world, AI research and safety giant Anthropic has shut down all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
The company revealed via social media and an official website statement that the decision was ultimately made by the US government.
In the official statement, Anthropic declared that “The US government…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…the net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.”
This government-forced autarky of the AI software came as a complete shock not only to consumers, but to the company itself.
“The [US Government] did not provide specific details of its national security concern. Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’…”
The surprise announcement is made all the more striking by the fact that Anthropic had prepared for this very issue, stating that “tests showed that Fable’s safeguards are substantially more effective than those of any previously deployed model.”
A deeper look into the details reveals that Anthropic and the Trump administration have been butting heads for a while, with this shutdown being the latest debacle.
The two entities have been involved in an ongoing lawsuit over an order preventing government agencies from using the company’s AI tools. Additionally, Trump and the US Defence Secretary have publicly labelled Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk’.
Now, in the fallout from this AI bombshell, Anthropic customers who upgraded their accounts after June 9 are set to receive a prorated refund if they cancel their plan before June 20.
During its short life, customers had to pay USD $50 for 1 million output tokens. Which makes sense, since the AI was designed for scientific and enterprise purposes, not cake recipes.
Today marks the day that a potentially powerful AI was cut down in the bloom of youth, thanks to the ongoing problem of government interference and interest in the emerging superpower of AI.
