Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI Model Nearing Release After Raising Cybersecurity Alarms

Anthropic said Thursday that it expects to expand access to its Claude Mythos AI models “in the coming weeks,” signaling the company may soon move beyond the tightly restricted rollout surrounding the cybersecurity-focused system.

“We’re making swift progress on developing these safeguards and expect to be able to bring Mythos-class models to all our customers in the coming weeks,” Anthropic said alongside the announcement of its new Opus 4.8 model release.

The statement is Anthropic’s clearest indication yet that wider availability for Mythos is in the works, following months of warnings from researchers, governments, and cybersecurity experts about the model’s capabilities.

Anthropic did not say what safeguards still need to be completed before Mythos receives a wider rollout, or whether all customers will receive the same level of access once the model becomes more broadly available.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.

Users on Myriad—a prediction market platform operated by Decrypt‘s parent company, Dastan—increasingly believe that the model will release by the end of June, giving that possibility a 44% chance as of that writing. That’s up from just 17.5% this morning.

Claude Mythos first surfaced in March after draft Anthropic blog materials leaked online. At the time, Anthropic described Mythos as “the most powerful AI model we’ve ever developed,” and positioned it as a new tier above the company’s cutting-edge Opus models.

“Although Mythos is currently far ahead of any other AI model in cyber capabilities, it presages an upcoming wave of models that can exploit vulnerabilities in ways that far outpace the efforts of defenders,” the company wrote.

Anthropic has since restricted access to Mythos through Project Glasswing, a program that gives select technology companies, security researchers, and government partners access to the model under controlled conditions.

The company has argued that Mythos could help defenders identify and patch software vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them. However, security researchers and government agencies warned that the same capabilities could speed up cyberattacks.

Those concerns intensified after the U.K.’s AI Security Institute found Mythos could autonomously complete a 32-step simulated corporate network attack during testing. In April, Mozilla said Mythos identified 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox during internal security evaluations. Earlier this month, security startup Calif claimed a preview version of the Mythos model helped researchers develop an exploit chain targeting Apple’s M5 Mac chips.

The model has also become part of a broader debate inside the AI industry over how advanced systems should be released, and whether AI developers were using fear of an AI apocalypse to push their products.

During an interview with the “Core Memory” podcast last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Anthropic of using “fear-based marketing,” arguing that warnings about cybersecurity risks could become a justification for limiting access to powerful AI systems.