June 30 (Reuters) – Anthropic said on Tuesday that the U.S. Commerce Department has lifted export controls on its Fable and Mythos AI models, less than three weeks after the company was ordered to suspend access to its most advanced AI models over national security risks.
Washington has stepped up oversight of new model releases to identify potential threats amid concerns that advanced AI models that are driving the AI boom and major capital investments could be misused by military intelligence users in China, Russia or other countries of concern.
Anthropic had abruptly disabled its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models following the export-control order on June 12. On Friday, the U.S. government allowed it to release Mythos 5 to some “trusted” U.S. organizations, partially reversing the order.
“We’ll begin restoring access tomorrow,” Anthropic said in a statement on X.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a letter to Anthropic seen by Reuters, said the export controls were withdrawn and that a license was no longer required for the export of the Mythos or Fable models.
“Anthropic has agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models; to work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols and standards and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models; and to inform the U.S. government of any malicious activity,” Lutnick said.
However, the government’s vetting of which companies can gain access to these models has drawn criticism.
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.”
ChatGPT-maker OpenAI delayed a full public launch of GPT-5.6 at the U.S. government’s request, limiting its access to a small group of vetted partners.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper, Costas Pitas, Ismail Shakil, Chris Thomas, Deepa Seetharaman; editing by Paul Thomasch, Rashmi Aich and Stephen Coates)
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