American artificial intelligence major Anthropic said Tuesday it was investigating unauthorized access to its publicly unreleased yet powerful AI model Mythos, which the company itself worries could be a boon for hackers.
Anthropic said earlier this month it restricted the release of Mythos to 40 major tech firms to give them a head start in fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities before they could be exploited by attackers.
According to Bloomberg, which first reported the probe, a small group of users in a private, online forum gained access to the model via the computer system reserved for Anthropic's external vendors.
"We're investigating a report claiming unauthorized access to Claude Mythos Preview through one of our third-party vendor environments," an Anthropic spokesperson told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The users got hold of Mythos by various means, including using access one of them had as a worker at a contractor for Anthropic, Bloomberg reported.
Anthropic works with a small number of third-party vendors who help with model development.
The firm has delayed a general release of Mythos, which it says can spot undiscovered security holes that have existed for decades, in systems tested by both human experts and automated tools.
It shared Mythos first with a few dozen key U.S. tech and financial services players – such as Nvidia, Amazon and JP Morgan Chase – to allow them to improve their security infrastructure.
But the company has also been accused of overhyping the powers of a technology, which is its stock in trade, and the subject of fierce competition with rival OpenAI.
