Anthropic plans to provide Mythos access to European banks soon, sources say

By Saeed Azhar, Jeffrey Dastin and Mathieu Rosemain

NEW YORK/PARIS, April 21 (Reuters) – Anthropic plans to provide access to its Mythos AI model to European banks soon, three people familiar with the matter said, as global banks scramble to test the technology after large U.S. banks were given initial access.

Mythos is viewed by cybersecurity experts as posing significant challenges to the banking industry and its legacy technology systems, prompting a series of warnings from regulators and policymakers gathered at last week’s International Monetary Fund spring meeting in Washington. A string of U.S. banks have so far been given access to Mythos – while the rest of the industry tries to catch up.

“The challenge is that this technology is moving faster than most banks’ governance, operating models and control frameworks were designed to handle, widening the gap between risk discovery and remediation,” said Scott Keipper, EY Americas Financial Services Technology Consulting Leader.

“To respond, banks need to move beyond point‑in‑time cybersecurity fixes and adopt an enterprise‑wide approach that embeds AI into risk management across technology, operations, governance and oversight, not just cybersecurity.”

Anthropic aims to expand Mythos AI access to European and UK banks, among other organizations, one of the people familiar with the matter told Reuters. 

That process involves checks to ensure the rollout is done securely, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another person said the access could be provided to European banks within days, while the first person said the rollout might take days or weeks. Bloomberg previously reported that Anthropic would release Mythos to UK financial institutions soon. 

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Anthropic initially provided access to the model to partners in its Project Glasswing initiative and about 40 additional organisations that build or maintain critical software infrastructure. 

JPMorgan Chase, which is part of Glasswing, was the only bank Anthropic has publicly said has access, although Bank of America has been part of Glasswing since the start and has been testing the Mythos technology internally, according to a source familiar with the matter.

   Other U.S. banks have more recently said they have been given access to Mythos, as regulators rush to examine the cybersecurity risks the new artificial intelligence model raises.

German central bank chief Joachim Nagel called on Tuesday for all institutions to have access to Anthropic’s artificial intelligence model Mythos to keep the playing field even and to avoid it being misused.

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar, Jeffrey Dastin and Mathieu Rosemain in Paris; editing by Megan Davies, Franklin Paul and Nick Zieminski)