AI companies make powerful technologies – but they are also savvy marketers

Hello and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor, writing to you from my happy village in Pokopia.

Where is the truth about AI?

Artificial intelligence companies make powerful products. They also make outlandish claims.

Last week, Anthropic released Claude Mythos, an AI model focused on cybersecurity that has sparked widespread excitement and panic about how powerful it is. However, there is a catch: the public is not allowed to touch it. OpenAI said late last week that the company had also developed a shockingly powerful cybersecurity AI.

Anthropic called Mythos a “reckoning” for the cybersecurity industry, saying the new tool has proven extremely adept at uncovering software weaknesses. According to Anthropic, Mythos has uncovered thousands of vulnerabilities in commonly used applications for which there is no patch or fix, which led the startup to form an alliance with cybersecurity specialists, nicknamed Project.