Anthropic’s most capable generative AI model is still in the hands of a select few organizations and cybersecurity professionals, but the most powerful Claude model available to general users is getting an upgrade.
Claude Opus 4.8, released Thursday, is a “modest but tangible improvement” over Opus 4.7, Anthropic said in a blog post. But the company also said it’s making significant progress on producing a version of its Claude Mythos Preview model that it’s willing to release to the public.
Right now, access to Mythos is restricted to a consortium of partners as part of what Anthropic calls Project Glasswing. The company explains that the model’s cybersecurity capabilities are advanced enough to warrant giving cybersecurity experts and major tech companies lead time to patch flaws the model identifies.
“Models of this capability level require stronger cyber safeguards before they can be generally released,” Anthropic said. “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.”
Anthropics’s decision to withhold Mythos Preview from the general public has drawn mixed reactions. Security researchers have found that the model is capable of finding exploits more quickly than human hackers, even if it isn’t necessarily pushing beyond human capabilities overall. Mozilla’s latest version of Firefox included more than 200 fixes identified by Mythos Preview.
The prospect of broader availability raises questions about whether the model will live up to its reputation — and what risks a wider release might bring.
Darren Williams, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm BlackFog, told CNET that major model releases are often tense moments. “On one hand, Anthropic’s decision to stage the release, holding back until safeguards are developed, shows the right instincts,” he said. “But the more capable a model is, the higher the stakes if those safeguards fall short or if the model is eventually misused. The window between a powerful model’s release and broad adoption of defenses against it is always a vulnerable moment.”
Mythos is expected to be significantly more expensive to run than other AI models, which could limit its practical usefulness to bad actors.
Source: Anthropic Plans Public Release of Mythos-Class Claude in Coming Weeks