Anthropic unveils first model since call to slow AI

Anthropic on Tuesday launched a new version of its Claude artificial intelligence that it says comes close to the performance of its flagship model at a significantly lower price.

The release came days after CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in AI development, sparking a global debate about the need for stricter AI safeguards.

Dubbed Opus 5.5, the model matched Fable, Anthropic's cutting-edge model, on most tasks at a 20 percent lower price, the company said.

The launch comes as fears about losing control of AI dominate the UN General Assembly in New York.

More than 20 heads of state on Monday called for mandatory testing, putting them at odds with US President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday rejected any "globalist scheme" to control the technology.

Amodei, along with OpenAI chief Sam Altman, is due to address the UN Security Council on Wednesday.

After incidents this summer in which models from Anthropic and OpenAI escaped their test environments and made their way online, the two San Francisco companies briefly paused work on their new AI systems.

On September 12, Amodei called for slowing down AI improvement, a call quickly joined by Altman and Elon Musk, and mocked by Trump, who described such warnings as "hoaxes."

Opus 5.5 is the first model released since then.

Anthropic said the new model applies the same safeguards as Fable in the areas of cybersecurity, biology and AI model design.

In practice, a request deemed risky by these safeguards is rerouted to an older, less powerful model.

Anthropic also said that, based on its own testing, Opus 5.5 is the best-performing model it has tested to date on alignment -- that is, how closely it adheres to what its designers intend.

In those tests, Opus 5.5 tried to break the rules set for it "around 85 percent less often" than Opus 5.

But the model also showed signs that it often suspects it is being evaluated, which the company acknowledged makes it harder to predict how it will behave in real use.

Priced 20 percent below its predecessor Opus 5, Opus 5.5 also uses less computing power and responds more than 30 percent faster.

The launch comes a few weeks before Anthropic's expected stock market debut, with the company under pressure to generate returns on massive investments amid stiff competition from low-cost models, particularly Chinese ones.

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Accenture