Mythos Comes Back But Not for Everyone

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, the return of Mythos begins, but the bigger questions remain. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
Of all of the sins of this particular administration when it comes to artificial intelligence, the one that is personally most disruptive to my life at this point might be the fact that important news keeps breaking late on Friday afternoon after I finished recordings for the weekend. And this Friday, it was a big one. In a letter to Anthropic, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick set the terms for a narrow reintroduction of Mythos. Notably, the letter was addressed not to Dario but to Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown, who has become increasingly the main point of contact between this White House and Anthropic. And in the letter, Lutnick starts to craft a path forward. Since the issuance of my June 12th letter, he writes, Anthropic has worked with the US government to address risks associated with Claude Mythos Five and Claude Fabel Five. These efforts have yielded significant progress. In addition, Anthropic has committed to work with the US government on protocols and standards and releases for these models. In light of this progress, as well as the Department of Commerce's evaluation of the diversion risks currently presented by the covered models, I have determined that appropriate safeguards are in place to permit certain trusted partners to access the Claude Mythos Five model.
Basically, Letnet goes on to say that a certain selected handful of partners, including presumably both companies and US government agencies, could once again have access to Mythos.
Now, no one has seen the full list provided by the Commerce Department, but reports suggest that around 100 organizations will regain that access. Still, what's clear from the letter is that Frontier AI models, if you were in any doubt, are now subject to a licensing regime. It's a licensing regime that hasn't been passed by Congress, established in an executive order, or even fully articulated in public. At this moment, it is a licensing model based on the whims of Howard Lutnick. Indeed, in that same letter, he says, I reserve the right to re-evaluate and adjust the scope of license requirements on the covered models should circumstances change.
So, presuming this is the beginning of the end, people should be excited, right? Mythos is coming back for select partners and presumably Fable 5 can't be all that far behind it. And yet, excitement is not the word that I would use to describe the tone. FutureForwards Matthew Berman was very upset about this all weekend, writing, Anthropic just struck a deal with the government to allow 100 select companies and governmental agencies to use Mythos. The government and Anthropic are now deciding who uses Frontier Intelligence. Hopefully, this is just Mythos and not the standard for all Frontier models going forward. Well, sorry Matthew, but it appears that it is not just Mythos and not just Anthropic models going forward, as the other big news from Friday was the release of the biggest air quotes possible of GPT-56.
GPT-56 is actually three models. Sol, which they call their next generation Frontier model, as well as 5.6 Terra, a balanced model for efficient everyday work, and 5.6 Luna, a fast and affordable model for high volume work.
Now, as I mentioned in the addendum to the weekly recap, at the request of the US government, these models will once again only be available to a small group of trusted partners. In their announcement post, OpenAI wrote, We believe in broad access and we plan to make GPT-5 Sol, Terra and Luna generally available in the coming weeks. As part of our ongoing engagement with the US government, we previewed our plans and the model's capabilities ahead of today's launch. At their request, we are starting with a limited preview for a small group of trusted partners whose participation has been shared with the government before releasing more broadly. During this preview, we will continue testing and coordinating closely with partners as we work toward broader availability. We don't believe this kind of government access program should become the long-term default. It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders and global partners who need them. We are taking this short-term step because we believe it is the strongest path to broader availability in the coming weeks while we work with the administration to develop the cyber executive order framework and a repeatable process for future model releases.
In additional comments, Sam Altman once again supported the premise of a limited rollout but disagreed with how it's being executed. He wrote, I think it's quite reasonable to rollout models, especially as they reach significant new levels of capability in this way. It fits with our long-held strategy of iterative deployment. But this isn't quite the process that we think is optimal. Now we will, with the government, attempt to get a transparent, reliable process for early access and to ensure that as long as our safeguards work as intended, we can release widely. We want to be a reliable, dependable partner that works with all stakeholders, and we also want to live by our mission of benefiting all of humanity. I believe the government shares most of our goals and that they are overall doing a good job in a very difficult situation. We will work as quickly as we can to get this model in your hands, and we hope you will love it. Now, as for the actual model, OpenAI has introduced new nomenclature for the family. Again, the model will be available in three different sizes, Luna, the cost-effective version, Terra, the medium version, which they say will deliver GPT 5.5 level performance at half the cost, and Sol, which is the new flagship that OpenAI says will be a step function better than GPT 5.5.