Anthropic\u2019s Claude Fable 5 AI model was released to the public on June 9 and taken down on June 12. By my math, it was available for a little over three days. Anthropic took down Fable 5 voluntarily in a manner of speaking, but by all accounts it was complying with an export control directive from the U.S. government under threat of penalties.<\/p>\n
Now a startup called Legion says in a new lawsuit against the government that Claude Fable 5 was so critical to its business that, \u201cEach day the directive remains in force disrupts Legion\u2019s product, operations, sidelines its engineers, and erodes the company\u2019s ability to survive in a field defined by continuous access to the most capable models,\u201d according to Bloomberg<\/a>, which pulled that line from the court filing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Legion, by the way, is an AI company for lawyers. According to its about page<\/a>, its product works like this:<\/p>\n \u201cUpload your case documents. Legion drafts your pleadings, discovery, and motions in minutes \u2013 with built-in editing tools to refine and ship.<\/p>\n Export a fully formatted Word document or a bookmarked PDF with exhibits and slip sheets.\u00a0Ready to file, ready to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n Arthur Rothrock, the CEO of Legion, said to Bloomberg, \u201cWho\u2019s to say they can\u2019t do this any other time against another company, like OpenAI?\u201d<\/p>\n When Anthropic took down Fable 5, Legion says it \u201clost the latest tool at the center of its development instantaneously,\u201d which caused, \u201cimmediate, irreparable and existential\u201d harm, again per Bloomberg. Legion\u2019s staff, Bloomberg notes, includes Canadian nationals located in Canada.<\/p>\n The Fable 5 model, the most advanced, consumer-facing version of Claude, was part of the same class as the Claude Mythos Preview model which Anthropic had said was too dangerous to release to the public<\/a>. Fable arrived about two months later<\/a>, advertised as a version of Mythos with elaborate and conspicuous safeguards.<\/p>\n But shortly after its release, the government\u2014according to media reports<\/a> from multiple publications<\/a>\u2014was informed that Amazon researchers had found workarounds that bypassed the safeguards.<\/p>\n This, reportedly combined with previous worries<\/a> that China-connected entities had access to Mythos, apparently led to the export control order, requiring Anthropic to keep Mythos and Fable away from anyone not a U.S. national. Faced with implementing an almost impossibly intricate citizenship-confirmation scheme in order to use Fable 5, Anthropic announced that it was pulling the plug<\/a>.<\/p>\n