Anthropic to meet White House over AI tool suspension

Bosses at the artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic are set to meet senior White House officials amid fresh national security concerns over the company's latest release.

The meeting is set to take place on Monday in Washington DC between executives at Anthropic and the US Department of Commerce, a government department led by Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It comes after Anthropic blocked all public access to the recent release of its latest AI tool on Friday, which it has previously said is "too powerful".

The firm made the decision after the US government prohibited Anthropic from allowing any foreign national access to the technology.

The AI tool at issue is named Fable 5 or Mythos 5. Fable 5 is a version of the tool with extra safeguards made available to the public, while Mythos 5 has different controls and is only available to a select group of organisations.

Both represent a new version of Claude Mythos, an Anthropic AI model that caused a stir when the company in April initially gave preview and testing access to a relatively small number of organizations, including departments within the US government.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is expected at the meeting with secretary Lutnick, a source said.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment. Representatives of Commerce and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.