BRUSSELS — The European Union is intensifying discussions with the U.S. administration and AI developer Anthropic over access to the advanced AI model Mythos, which has not been made available to non-U.S. governments except the U.K.'s AI Security Institute. During talks about preview access, Anthropic informed the European Commission that the bloc must first seek permission from the U.S. government.

"The European Union is looking to 'intensify' discussions with the U.S. administration on the most advanced AI models, including those with 'cyber capabilities,'" a Commission official told CNBC. Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier added, "Cybersecurity is a shared priority and we have agreed to mutually recognise our respective standards in this area." He said, "In parallel we are now expanding technical discussions with Anthropic and other model developers which have notified their latest models to the AI office."

Anthropic announced its Mythos model in April and initially rolled it out to a select group of companies and organizations through Project Glasswing. The company has not granted the EU, its AI office, or any other non-U.S. government access to the model. According to a person familiar with the discussions, Anthropic told the Commission that while the White House is not opposed to sharing Mythos with the EU specifically, it generally opposes providing the model to non-U.S. governments.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House opposed Anthropic’s proposal to expand Mythos access to roughly 70 additional companies and organizations due to security concerns. Anthropic said on Thursday that models of Mythos’ capability require strong cyber safeguards before general release and that it expects to bring "Mythos-class" models to all customers in the coming weeks. "We're making swift progress on developing these safeguards and expect to be able to bring Mythos-class models to all our customers in the coming weeks," Anthropic said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. is working to balance innovation and safety as it seeks to maintain its lead over China in the global AI race. "We want to make sure that we keep that lead. So, we are working on the exact calculus between innovation and safety, and we want to optimize for that," Bessent said. He added that the U.S. is the world’s AI leader, with China in second place, and called AI labs "excellent partners" in achieving a solution that "solves for maximum calculus."