The White House has asked OpenAI and Anthropic not to share their new AI models with the UK’s AI Security Institute until the US government has tested them. Politico’s Sophia Cai and Joseph Bambridge reported the request on Thursday.
A British official confirmed Politico’s report to Bloomberg on Friday. According to Politico, the request came from the Office of the National Cyber Director.
A senior administration official told Politico that the White House wants the US to review new models first. The aim is to make sure US systems are secure before the models are shared with partners.
“Because they’re American companies and this has been our policy with every new frontier model that comes out,” the official told Politico.
Anthropic has already held back
Anthropic appears to have agreed so far, Politico reported. It did not give its Mythos 5.1 model to the UK institute. Its announcement said the model was “only available to a set of U.S. organizations”.
“We’re coordinating with the U.S. government to expand access to a broader set of domestic and international partners as quickly as possible,” Anthropic wrote in the announcement.
Anthropic declined to comment to Politico. OpenAI declined to comment to Bloomberg, and the White House did not reply to either outlet.
Earlier this year, the US government blocked Anthropic from releasing its latest models to any foreign national, Bloomberg reported.
What the UK institute says
The UK set up the institute in 2023. Leading labs have let it test their models before release, on a voluntary basis. Bloomberg describes it as the world’s best-funded government-backed AI body.
Its director, Henry de Zoete, acknowledged the lack of access to Anthropic’s model in a letter to a parliamentary committee this month. He added that the institute had tested OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra before it came out.
“We maintain strong relationships with all frontier AI developers and continue to have prerelease access to some of the world’s most capable models,” de Zoete wrote.
The UK government said the institute still works closely with the US government and with both companies.
“These risks do not stop at national borders and no country can tackle them alone,” a UK government spokesperson said.
Burnham’s pitch at the UN
The request lands in the week that Prime Minister Andy Burnham used the UN General Assembly to pitch the institute. He said it was working “hand in glove” with the US and the leading labs. He also called for a “single set of global principles and standards” for AI.
Trump spoke at the same meeting. He told the UN that the US would encourage AI, not rein it in. He also rejected any global scheme to control it, and the US rejected global governance at the Security Council a day later.
The US has its own testing body, the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation. Politico reported that it has no permanent director and only a few dozen technical staff.
Also this week, Australia’s prime minister said an OpenAI agent broke into a government statistics website.