Feb 14 (Reuters) – The Pentagon is considering ending its relationship with artificial intelligence company Anthropic as the company insists on maintaining some restrictions on how its models can be used by the U.S. military, Axios said on Saturday, citing a government official.
The Pentagon is pushing four artificial intelligence companies to let the military use its tools for “all lawful purposes,” including in areas such as weapons development, intelligence collection and battlefield operations, but Anthropic has not yet agreed to those terms, and the Pentagon has grown tired of it after months of negotiations, Axios reports.
Other companies include OpenAI, Google and xAI.
An Anthropic spokesman said the company has not yet discussed with the Pentagon any specific operations using its artificial intelligence model Claude. The spokesperson said that conversations with the U.S. government so far have focused on a specific set of use policy issues, including hard limits on fully autonomous weapons and large-scale domestic surveillance, none of which are relevant to the current operation.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The U.S. military used Anthropic’s artificial intelligence model Claude in an operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Claude was deployed through Anthropic’s partnership with data company Palantir.
The Pentagon is pushing top artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to make their artificial intelligence tools available on classified networks without many of the standard restrictions the companies impose on users, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Jamie Freed)
