In a twist of fate, it seems that Anthropic’s recently launched AI model, Fable 5, has lived up to its name.
The term fable means a short, fictional story designed to teach a specific moral lesson or practical truth.
Just three days after releasing alongside the Mythos 5, the US government forced Anthropic to shut down both models. The ban was implemented following a court order stating that any person who is not a US citizen is prohibited from using the two models.
However, the restriction applies to anyone regardless of whether they are a US citizen, as there is no technical mechanism developed by Anthropic to verify citizenship status among users, leading to termination of access.
The legal action was taken following a complaint filed by an anonymous company, which allegedly described a “jailbreak” technique capable of bypassing specific security protocols.
Given that, federal officials flagged the vulnerability as a national security risk.
Anthropic has fiercely defended itself, insisting that thousands of hours were spent testing its security systems before release. Anthropic claims that the safeguards implemented on Fable 5 “were stronger than any AI model that has been released ever before.”
To make the system more secure, the company claimed to implement a “defense-in-depth” strategy that aims to protect multiple layers of protection designed to make any solution either technically narrow or financially prohibitive.
Despite these preventive measures, the government decided to close it after just a verbal announcement.
At the time of writing, access to users has stopped. For some users who barely started their journey with Fable, it turned out to be an adventure.
But what practical truth did this fable really teach?
When the US government forced Anthropic to shut down its two newest AI models, it may have done more than kill a product. The move actually sent a chilling message to every investor pouring billions into artificial intelligence.
The implications are staggering for venture capitalists and institutional investors who have poured tens of billions into AI startups.
For investors, this is an even deeper point to consider as their investment is not really safe as no AI product is safe to launch. Industry observers ponder who will invest further when the government can delete companies’ products with a verbal announcement.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the industry. Investing in artificial intelligence involves a lot of investment in infrastructure and expensive hardware and software, which are not cheap to get. Investors have taken technical risks, but to what extent would they accept regulatory risks?
For now, Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are out of business. Across all of Silicon Valley, the million-dollar question on everyone’s mind is how quickly their next billion can disappear.
