Frontier AI at a cost: what Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 means for the US-China model race

Anthropic’s powerful new Claude Fable 5.1 model has widened its lead in performance benchmarks over Chinese rivals, even as budget-friendly open-weight models from China continue to gain commercial traction globally. The American company said on Wednesday that Fable 5.1, along with a restricted-access version called My

Anthropic says its newest AI models, Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, address criticisms from customers about price, data retention, and overzealous safeguards. The company claims Claude Fable 5.1 offers stronger performance than Fable 5, but costs around 25 percent less typically and up to 45 percent less for complex agentic

Fable 5.1 includes changes meant to reduce token cost and false-positive restrictions from the model's safeguards.

In June, Anthropic first released Fable 5, its Mythos-class AI model for Claude. Three months later, Anthropic is enhancing Claude with its new Fable 5.1 model upgrade. more…