The Morning Download: Anthropic Taps the Brakes

Good morning. As expected, Claude Opus 4.7, the new AI model released by Anthropic on Thursday, improves on predecessor Opus 4.6 with advanced software engineering capabilities and higher-resolution image processing.

But what may be most notable is how the AI startup is positioning it vis-à-vis a more recent release, Claude Mythos, shared earlier this month with a limited group of technology companies, financial firms and others through an initiative called Project Glasswing.

“We are releasing Opus 4.7 with safeguards that automatically detect and block requests that indicate prohibited or high-risk cybersecurity uses,” Anthropic said in a release.

That's right: The latest model is less capable than Claude Mythos in certain areas, from agentic coding to “graduate-level reasoning,” according to benchmarks shared by the company.

Behind the "nerfing": As the Journal reported earlier, Mythos has set off a scramble among technology employees inside major companies to understand how it could upend cybersecurity. Anthropic has purposely limited availability.

With Opus 4.7, the hope is that Anthropic can navigate any security risks and work to build confidence in its safeguards.

“What we learn from the real-world deployment of these safeguards will help us work towards our eventual goal of a broad release of Mythos-class models,” Anthropic explained in its release.

Meanwhile, more organizations are seeking access to Mythos itself. Bloomberg reports that the U.S. government is preparing to provide federal agencies access to the model.

The week quantum stocks soared. IonQ was up 50% for the week as of Thursday with D-Wave Quantum and Rigetti Computing also posting gains. CNBC links the rally to a new family of open-source models from Nvidia aimed at increasing quantum adoption.

Dairy Queen to begin testing drive-through chatbots. Order-taking bots have been an early step in restaurants tinkering with AI, and it has had mixed results for customers and brands. See past CIO Journal stories here and here. Dairy Queen is working with technology company Presto, which is also working with Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, on AI for their drive-throughs.

Apple to send coders back to school. The company plans to send a sizable chunk of its Siri development team to an AI coding bootcamp ahead of a long-anticipated revamp of the voice assistant. According to the Information, which broke the news, the Siri group has a reputation of being a laggard within the company.

London is calling for AI companies. This week Anthropic said it had secured 158,000 square feet of office space in London for about 800 people, while rival OpenAI announced an 88,500-square-foot space in King’s Cross to accommodate more than 500 people.

U.S. to create high-tech manufacturing zone in Philippines. The hub will occupy a 4,000-acre site given to the U.S. by Manila rent-free and will have diplomatic immunity. The two-year lease is renewable for 99 years, but details on which American companies will participate are yet to be determined, the WSJ reports.

The possibility of direct talks between the leaders of Israel and Lebanon as announced by President Trump on Thursday would mark a historic step for two neighboring states. But the talks would leave one of the main belligerents on the sidelines: Hezbollah. (WSJ)

President Trump’s feud with Pope Leo XIV and the president’s AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure have become a global story about the clash of the two most powerful Americans—and one that is testing the loyalties of the roughly 53 million U.S. Roman Catholics. (WSJ)

A compromise House proposal to renew a powerful national-security surveillance program for five years failed to advance early Friday, an embarrassing setback for Republican Party leaders who thought they could muscle the measure over the finish line in overnight votes. (WSJ)

Netflix Chairman and co-founder Reed Hastings will step down from the company’s board after his term expires in June, the streaming giant said Thursday. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.