Anthropic says it blocked potential AI bioweapon misuse

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic says it blocked several possible attempts to use its AI technology for research that could potentially support the development of biological weapons, according to a new report from the company.

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI assistant, said it disrupted dozens of instances of potentially malicious use of its AI models since December 2025, including several examples of what the company described as "biological misuse."

The report details five case studies involving the use of Anthropic's models in ways the company said "could support biological weapons development."

In one instance, Anthropic said a researcher outside the United States accessed Claude from a region where the AI assistant is not supported and used the model while researching highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu. According to the company, the research focused in part on the virus' adaptation to mammals.

Anthropic said the research was "clearly dual use in nature," noting that understanding how the virus adapts could help scientists identify naturally emerging variants with pandemic potential but could also produce information that could potentially be used to make a virus more dangerous.

Anthropic said it banned accounts associated with the cases but stressed that it could not determine whether the researchers intended to cause harm.

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"We do not assert that they intended harm," the company said in the report.

This is not the first time Anthropic has released a report detailing potential misuse of AI. The company has issued three prior threat assessments detailing malicious uses of AI.

The latest report was released days after former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon spoke publicly about his concerns over increasingly powerful AI systems.

"If you extrapolate into the future, the level of capabilities of these AIs," Coxon told CNN. "They could cause extreme havoc, for example, hacking critical infrastructure, building extinction-level bioweapons."

Coxon's comments come as a growing number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling for increased government oversight and new safety regulations for AI development.