White House opposes Anthropic plan to expand Mythos AI technology access

Members of US President Donald Trump's administration have told Anthropic that they don't agree with the company's plan to grant access to its Mythos technology to roughly 70 companies

By Hadriana Lowenkron and Mark Anderson

 

The White House opposes a plan by Anthropic PBC to expand access to its Mythos AI model, an administration official said Wednesday night.   

 

Members of President Donald Trump’s administration have told Anthropic that they don’t agree with the company’s plan to grant access to its Mythos technology to roughly 70 companies and organizations, according to the official, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

 

The misgivings regarding Mythos, a technology that the company says is powerful enough to enable dangerous cyberattacks, were reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal. 

 

US officials are worried that Anthropic doesn’t have enough computing power to serve more Mythos users without affecting the government’s ability to use it effectively, according to the Journal, which cited unnamed sources.

 

 

A White House official told the newspaper that the administration was balancing innovation and security while cooperating with the private sector to ensure that artificial intelligence models are rolled out safely. 

 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday night. Anthropic declined to comment.

 

Unveiled in early April, Mythos is purportedly able to detect and exploit vulnerabilities in a wide range of critical software. 

 

Anthropic deemed it to be too dangerous for wide release and has instead let a limited group of companies begin testing it on their own systems. However, the model has been accessed by a small group of unauthorized users, Bloomberg News has reported.

 

The risk was underscored when a small group of unauthorized users in a private online forum gained access to Mythos on the same day that Anthropic first announced its limited release plan, according to a person familiar with the matter and documentation viewed by Bloomberg News.