blog postAnthropic will give UK banks access to its Mythos artificial intelligence model within the next week, the company's European head has confirmed, expanding a controlled rollout that has prompted emergency meetings among the world's most senior financial officials.
Pip White, Anthropic's head of UK, Ireland and northern Europe, told Bloomberg Television that access for UK financial institutions was imminent, adding that engagement from British chief executives had been significant.
"That is in the very near term, in the next week," White said.
The rollout so far has been restricted to roughly 40 organisations, primarily large US technology and financial companies,that including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase, which are using the model under Anthropic's controlled Project Glasswing initiative for defensive cybersecurity purposes.
Anthropic warned in a blog post, that AI models have now reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities, and that the consequences for economies, public safety and national security could be severe.
The model dominated discussions at the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington this week, displacing the agenda officials had expected to focus on the Middle East conflict, private credit tensions and government debt levels.
François-Philippe Champagne, Canada's finance minister, told the BBC the threat warranted the attention of every finance minister present, describing Mythos as harder to assess than familiar risks such as physical chokepoints.
"The difference with the Strait of Hormuz is that we know where it is and we know how large it is," Champagne said.
Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England and chair of the Financial Stability Board, called it a very serious challenge, noting how rapidly the AI landscape is moving.
"It reminds us how fast the AI world moves," Bailey told the BBC.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, praised Anthropic as a responsible company but warned that existing international governance frameworks are not equipped to manage the risks if similar capabilities fall into the wrong hands.
"I don't think there is a governance framework that is there to actually mind those things," Lagarde told Bloomberg Television. "We need to work on that."
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell had already convened the chief executives of America's largest banks, including Jane Fraser of Citigroup, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs and Charlie Scharf of Wells Fargo, to discuss Mythos and its implications for systemically important institutions.
In the UK, the Bank of England's Cross Market Operational Resilience Group is expected to raise Mythos risks with bank executives and government officials in the coming weeks.
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The group's membership includes the chief executives of the UK's eight largest banks, four financial infrastructure providers, two insurers and representatives from the Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and the National Cyber Security Centre.
Dan Katz, deputy head of the IMF and former chief of staff to Bessent, said cybersecurity would be "absolutely essential" on the international agenda for the coming months.
The recap
- Anthropic will give UK banks Mythos access within the next week.
- Initial release restricted to a small number of US firms.
- Regulators will discuss Mythos risks with bank bosses soon.
