The ongoing feud between OpenAI and Anthropic got a fresh jab this week. Sam Altman, sitting down for a podcast interview, aimed squarely at Anthropic's latest cybersecurity model, Mythos, arguing his rival is dressing up its product with scare tactics rather than substance.

Key Takeaways:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Anthropic of using "fear-based marketing" to promote its new Mythos cybersecurity model.
Anthropic released Mythos this month only to a small group of enterprise clients, saying broader release could help cybercriminals.
Altman suggested the framing serves to concentrate AI power among a select few, though the AI industry broadly -- including OpenAI -- has leaned on dramatic rhetoric before.

Anthropic unveiled Mythos earlier this month and handed access to a narrow slice of enterprise customers. The company's explanation? The model is simply too potent to put in public hands, since bad actors could turn it into a weapon. Plenty of observers have pushed the back on that claim, calling it exaggerated.

Speaking on the Core Memory podcast, Altman suggested Anthropic's approach was a convenient way to gatekeep the technology. "There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people," he said. "You can justify that in a lot of different ways."

He didn't stop there. "It is clearly incredible marketing to say, 'We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million,'" Altman added.

Of course, Anthropic didn't pioneer this playbook. A good chunk of the AI sector has relied on dramatic warnings and grand claims to boost the perceived power of its products. Apocalyptic talk about AI ending civilization hasn't only come from skeptics and activists -- it's come from the very companies building and selling the tech. Altman's own name appears on that list.

Sam Altman Takes Aim at Anthropic's "Mythos" Rollout, Calls It Fear Marketing