The US is really shooting itself in the foot here. The restrictions on LLM models like Fable has created a viable international LLM market where it was difficult to justify investment two weeks ago. As a non-US citizen Opus 4.8 is the best American LLM I will ever have access to. That's no longer up for debate or question. Each month that I pay Anthropic is now a depreciating value -- I'm paying for models I'll never…
This identity verification is a best effort to kinda stay afloat: they can now offer bleeding edge models to US nationals, but not to the other 95% of the world. Their influence is gonna tank quite seriously if the previous mandate is not reversed.
Realistically, their choices are to either implement this, or restrict access to new models entirely, which is a sure way to fall into complete irrelevance.