Anthropic blocks possible attempt to use AI to make biological weapons

The cases of concern detected over the past eight months ranged from fake dating apps and hotel Wifi scams, to surveillance built to identify dissidents.Anthropic has also accused Chinese AI firms of trying to replicate Claude's capabilities. The lengthy report lists cases in which suspected state-sponsored groups, criminals, spyware vendors, state propaganda institutions and politically motivated individuals misused its technology."Malicious use" of its Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus models was disrupted between December 2025 and August 2026, it said.None of the misuse cases involved Claude Fable or the powerful Mythos-class models, with the exception of one instance of distillation - the process for training smaller AI models using larger, more expensive models.As well as detecting the use of its models for cyber and influence operations, surveillance, scams and fraud and weapon development, Anthropic said it had blocked scientists who used its AI in ways that could support biological weapons development.The report highlighted "five case studies of actors using our models in ways that could support biological weapons development".Biological misuse, it said, is "one of the most serious risks of frontier AI model". Without the correct safeguards, such capabilities "could have catastrophic consequences", Anthropic said.