June 12, 2026
Anthropic has taken its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models offline for all customers after the US government issued an export-control directive under national security authorities. Access to the company’s other models is unaffected.
What happened
Anthropic said the directive arrived on the afternoon of June 12 and required it to cut off access for every customer, including foreign nationals inside and outside the United States. The order did not spell out the specific concern, but the company believes it relates to a reported technique for bypassing Fable 5’s safeguards. Anthropic said its own review found the method exposed only minor, already-known issues that other widely available models can surface too.
Why it matters
It is a rare case of a government compelling a frontier AI provider to withdraw a deployed commercial model. Anthropic is complying but publicly disagrees with the basis for the order, arguing that a narrow, non-universal jailbreak should not trigger the recall of a model used by hundreds of millions of people, and that applying such a standard broadly would stall new model releases across the industry.
What happens next
The company apologized to customers, called the situation a misunderstanding, and said it is working to restore access and would share more detail within 24 hours. We will update this story as it develops.
Source: Anthropic’s published statement, June 12, 2026; facts attributed to Anthropic.