A US company had to turn off two of its most powerful AI tools because the US government said foreigners were no longer allowed to use them.
What happened? A company called Anthropic makes AI tools that can write code, analyse documents and help with all kinds of work. This week they launched a new one called Fable 5, based on an even stronger model called Mythos 5. Just days later, the US government told the company: cut off everyone who is not a US citizen. Because Anthropic could not quickly build a system that only checks where someone is from, it turned the models off for everyone worldwide. That meant hundreds of millions of people suddenly lost access to a tool they had just started using.
Who is helping? Anthropic says it is in talks with the US government to find a way to bring access back, and that it tested its safety systems for thousands of hours together with the US government, the UK AI Safety Institute and outside experts. In Europe, the European Commission has said it is watching the situation closely and is looking at what this means for people in the EU. Industry groups, digital-rights organisations and politicians in Germany and Austria are also pushing for Europe to build its own strong AI tools, so countries here are not so dependent on decisions made in Washington.