Anthropic and Pentagon at standstill over military usage guardrails

Anthropic’s Claude was used in the US military operations in Venezuela, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Saturday, clashing with the AI maker’s restrictions on how the military can use its models.

The mission to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife involved bombing across Caracas and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry.

However, Anthropic’s usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons or conduct surveillance.

Claude's deployment came via Anthropic's partnership with controversial data giant Palantir Technologies, the WSJ added, whose platforms are widely used by the Defense Department and federal law enforcement and border control.

The news comes as Axios reported on Saturday that The Pentagon is considering ending its relationship with Anthropic over its insistence on keeping some restrictions on how the military uses its models.

The Pentagon is pushing four commercial AI companies to let the military use their tools for "all lawful purposes," including in areas of weapons development, intelligence collection and battlefield operations.

Off limits: Mass surveillance and autonomous weapons

Anthropic insists that two areas remain off limits: the mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weaponry.

The other companies included OpenAI, Google and xAI.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Pentagon was pushing top AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to make their artificial intelligence tools available on classified networks without many of the standard restrictions that the companies apply to users.

Many AI companies are building custom tools for the US military, most of which are available only on unclassified networks typically used for military administration.

Anthropic is the only one that is available in classified settings through third parties, but the government is still bound by the company's usage policies.

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