Fable, Disabled

On Friday night, the U.S. government banned Anthropic’s distribution of Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to non-U.S. nationals. In response, Anthropic disabled Fable for all customers. As of this writing, the situation is ongoing.

It remains to be seen how it will play out, but I can already see the difference in my AI usage. Here’s a graph comparing my Claude and Codex usage before and after the ban (the “event” below):

Before the ban, I was split about evenly between Claude and Codex. After (and after a period where I was using neither because I was sleeping), I switched almost entirely to Codex.

My guess is that this ban is not going to last very long. It seems to rest on a misunderstanding between the government and Anthropic about which kinds of guardrail bypasses are fixable and what counts as an adequate solution. Anthropic believes the jailbreak identified by the government is narrow rather than universal—it surfaces only minor vulnerabilities that other public models are already susceptible to. The government apparently believes otherwise. Because both sides are highly incentivized to work this out, I’d bet that the ban is revoked after a few days—and demand for the newly returned Fable skyrockets.

However, this kind of move is extremely disruptive and distracting for people working at Anthropic. The only comparable scenario I can remember is Sam Altman’s firing, which was resolved relatively quickly. Even though Altman was reinstated, I do think the chaos disrupted the company’s momentum for months afterward.

We’ll keep a close eye on whether the same is true here.—Dan Shipper