AI Model Wars: Anthropic Extends Fable Access Again After OpenAI's Sol Release

Anthropic extended access for Claude Fable 5 for subscribers for the second time in a week, an apparent response to the launch of OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT model—which the rival firm claims sets a “new standard”—following Fable’s turbulent debut overshadowed by its clash with the U.S. government. The U.S. quickly blocked the debut of Anthropic’s Mythos models before they were released.

Anthropic, announcing its decision Sunday on X, through an email to subscribers and an updated support page, said Claude Fable 5 would be available to subscribers at no extra cost through July 19. That marks the second time Anthropic has expanded access to Fable after launching a one-week promotion on July 7, allowing Claude users to spend up to 50% of their weekly subscription limits on the model. Even if users exhaust their expanded Fable access, they can still use the model by purchasing usage credits, which allow Claude subscribers to pay based on how much they use, Anthropic said.

The extension comes just three days after OpenAI launched GPT-5.6, headlined by its flagship model Sol, which the company said achieved “state-of-the-art” results in coding, knowledge work, cybersecurity and science while “outperforming previous and competing frontier models” at a lower cost. OpenAI claimed Sol and its other new models outperformed Anthropic’s Fable in coding tasks and that its rival’s model failed to test for questions involving scientific research (Anthropic said Fable would “fall back” to a previous model for most biology and chemistry requests).