Anthropic’s new privacy policy, introduced last week and taking effect on July 8, offers a way around a US export ban on its AI models Fable and Mythos for some consumers. On Friday, the US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to Fable and Mythos to all foreign nationals, citing national security reasons. Anthropic stated in a blog post that “the net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance,” implying it cannot distinguish between foreign nationals and US citizens. The updated privacy policy includes a new provision under “Verification Data,” allowing Anthropic to ask users to verify their age or identity by collecting an image of a government-issued identity document, information on it, photo or video images, facial geometry templates, and the verification result. If the ban continues, Anthropic could open access to users willing to submit a scan of their identity document proving US citizenship, such as US passports or enhanced driving licenses from some Northern border states. Enterprise users will have to hope for another solution.