U.S. Commerce Department lifts export restrictions on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced on Tuesday that it has lifted the export controls imposed in June on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 artificial-intelligence models. The restriction had required the company to block access for all foreign nationals, including its own employees abroad, in compliance with a national-security directive.

Anthropic said it will begin restoring access to Fable 5 on Wednesday and thanked users for their patience. The company had disabled the models earlier to meet the government order.

"Over the past two weeks, we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America's leadership in AI," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote in a post on X.

Lutnick had previously granted Anthropic permission to release Mythos 5 to a limited set of companies and federal agencies after determining that appropriate safeguards were in place for "trusted partners."

The export controls were introduced amid concerns that Chinese open-source models were rapidly advancing and could benefit from delayed U.S. releases. The move coincided with the Trump administration’s broader effort to increase oversight of AI development, including an executive order signed in early June that asked developers to submit models for government review before wide distribution.

Industry observers noted that the regulatory environment remains uncertain, with companies such as OpenAI also limiting initial rollouts of new models to select partners while expressing reservations about long-term government access requirements.