US Lifts Restrictions on Foreign Access to Anthropic's Powerful AI Models

The United States government has lifted its restrictions on foreign access to Anthropic’s most powerful AI models, the company has announced.

Anthropic said late on Tuesday that it would begin restoring access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 from tomorrow after the US Department of Commerce notified the company that it had removed its export controls.

“We’re grateful to our users for their patience, and to everyone who worked with us on redeploying the models,” Anthropic said in a statement posted on X.

In a letter to Anthropic that was widely circulated online, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the company no longer required an export licence as it had agreed to “proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models”, to work with the government on standards for upcoming models, and to inform the government of “malicious activity”.

Anthropic abruptly shut off Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 last month after US President Donald Trump’s administration ordered the company to restrict all foreign nationals, including company employees, from accessing the models.

Anthropic said at the time that the government had not provided a specific reason for the order beyond unspecified national security concerns, but that it believed officials were worried about security vulnerabilities in Fable 5.

On Friday, the San Francisco-based company said it had been granted approval to provide the models to US organisations that “operate and defend critical infrastructure”, and that it was working with the government to restore general access for the public.

The restrictions had been the latest source of tension in the testy relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration.

In March, Anthropic sued the US Department of Defense after the Pentagon labelled the company a “supply chain risk” over its refusal to work with the US military without explicit assurances that its AI tools will not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons.

Francesco Bailo, deputy director of the AI, Trust and Governance Centre at the University of Sydney, said that the lifting of the restrictions had been expected in tech circles as reports that researchers were able to “jailbreak” Fable 5 had been widely inflated beyond their actual significance.

“The US government likely realised it had overreacted, and also that its decision would produce a dangerous, messy precedent in terms of regulations and strong backlash from an industry that has invested considerably in maintaining close communication with the Trump administration,” Bailo told Al Jazeera.

“It was also clear that if Fable and Mythos were blocked on these grounds, competitor models would have to be blocked too.”

Tanishq Abraham, a former research director at Stability AI who now leads the medical AI company Sophont, said the Trump administration’s latest move was a “big deal” that raised important questions for regulation of the industry.

“Externally, it seems like the fraught relationship between Anthropic and the US gov has been improving, and this is likely due to the efforts of Tom Brown,” Abraham told Al Jazeera, referring to the Anthropic cofounder.

“The biggest question now is: What precedent does this set for the industry? Does the US government need to approve every frontier model release?” Abraham said.

“We’re already starting to see this with the GPT-5.6 release. Lots of unanswered questions about how frontier labs have to interact with the US government.”