The United States has lifted the requirement that Anthropic obtain a license before exporting its Mythos and Fable models overseas. This is a requirement that effectively blocks public access to what is widely considered the most advanced AI model on the market today.
The AI Institute said it will begin restoring access to models from Wednesday, July 1.
On June 12, the U.S. government added this product to its list of export restricted technologies. This means it can no longer be used by foreign nationals without special approval. Complying with those rules proved impractical on a large scale, forcing Anthropic to completely suspend public access to the models.
Now, after weeks of talks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Anthropic has agreed to “proactively detect and address security risks associated with its models, work diligently with the U.S. government on protocols, standards, and releases for Mythos, Fable, and future models, and notify the U.S. government of any malicious activity.”
Anthropic had already publicly committed to doing much of this voluntarily, months before export regulations existed. That’s one reason cybersecurity experts are skeptical of the restrictions in the first place. To them, the ban seemed less like a security fix and more like a crowbar, a way for the Trump administration to punish Anthropic for its executives’ public criticism of how the technology could be used by the government and the president’s political opponents.
Mythos was originally made available to a select group of organizations starting in April to allay concerns about their ability to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the software, and a version called Fable was released to the public in June with additional security guardrails.
But as Asian AI companies, including Fugu and Tulongfeng, began releasing their own AI models that approached Mythos-level capabilities, the U.S. government came under pressure to ease restrictions on Anthropic to allow U.S. AI to compete globally.
Last week, Lutnick authorized Mythos to be released to select customers approved by the White House. OpenAI’s latest model has also been released to a group of organizations approved by the Trump team, rather than to the public.
The Trump administration’s erratic approach to AI policymaking has left companies across the industry unclear about how future model launches will be affected. The June executive order announcing the intention to review models ahead of launch drew criticism from influential analysts such as Dean W. Ball, who recently held a policy position at OpenAI.
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