Anthropic, which claimed AI model was too risky for public to use, releases ‘safe’ version

After hyping potential safety threats posed by its latest AI model, Anthropic says it is releasing a version with tweaks that make it “safe” for the general public.

A day after filing for its initial public offering, the company on Tuesday trumpeted a new version of the Mythos model with guardrails around cybersecurity and biological weapons.

If the model, called Claude Fable 5, is asked about off-limits issues like exploiting a software bug or creating bioweapons, the response will be blocked and users will be directed to an older model known as Opus 4.8, Anthropic said in a press release.

The company, led by Chief Executive Dario Amodei, has for years hyped the dangerous potential of its products while painting itself as a responsible steward of powerful AI technology. The San Francisco-based firm is on course for competing public listings this year with rivals OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which merged with his AI outfit xAI in February. 

Anthropic is calling the new model “Mythos-class,” a tier of Claude models which is more capable than its prior “Opus-class” models.  

“Releasing a model this capable comes with risks. Without safeguards, Fable 5’s capabilities in areas like cybersecurity could be misused to cause serious damage,” Anthropic said. “We’ve therefore launched the model with safeguards that mean queries on some topics will instead receive a response from our next-most-capable model, Claude Opus 4.8.”

The company went on to explain that “harmless” requests will sometimes get blocked, but said that would be rare.

“We wanted to be able to provide this level of intelligence for general users in a safe manner,” Anthropic’s head of product management Dianne Penn told the Wall Street Journal. 

Anthropic spooked the tech industry and governments when it announced earlier this year that Mythos was powerful enough to cause widespread cybersecurity disruptions. It decided to limit the product’s release to about 200 organizations.

Anthropic has sounded a steady drumbeat of caution about AI, drawing skepticism from some critics.

Just last week, the company called for an industry-wide pause to slow the pace of development while the industry gets a handle on potential societal risks.

Commentators and rivals said Anthropic just wants to hobble the competition in the red-hot race to develop advanced artificial intelligence.