RBI officials have held consultations on Anthropic’s Mythos-related risks over the past fortnight with global counterparts
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is in talks with global regulators, Indian lenders and government officials to understand the potential risks posed by Anthropic’s latest artificial intelligence model Mythos, NDTV sources said.
India’s central bank’s preliminary assessment yielded results similar to that of global regulators – suggesting that Mythos could pose cybersecurity risks by accelerating the discovery and exploitation of software vulnerabilities, sources familiar with the central bank’s thinking mentioned. This poses direct risks to millions of Indian customers who rely on digital banking and payment platforms daily.
The discussion reached a level that led to India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chairing a high-stakes meeting on Thursday, emphasising the need for coordination between banks, fintechs, and regulators, due to potential threats posed by Mythos.
Read More: FM Sitharaman Chairs Meeting On Mythos Impact On India’s Fintech Ecosystem
Banks have been cautioned by regulators in Asia, Europe, and the US to examine their defences and readiness. The Australian central bank stated it is keeping an eye on events pertaining to Mythos, while the financial watchdog in Japan will meet with banks this week.
“Globally, we are discussing with other countries and other regulators on what are the developments and what safeguards need to be taken,” one source told Reuters.
In India, RBI officials have consulted with counterparts in the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England in particular with Mythos-related risks during the last two weeks, as per NDTV sources. The RBI may seek direct engagement with Anthropic, the sources said.
India’s payment authority, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), is trying to secure early access to Mythos alongside a small number of banks, to identify vulnerabilities and “day-zero” cyber risks ahead of any broader rollout, this source said. Recent years have seen a fast digitalisation of India’s financial industry, with the Unified Payments Interface handling more than 14 lakh crore rupees every month. Customer accounts, transaction information, and payment credentials could be exploited by any weakness in banking systems.
Read More: FM Sitharaman Flags ‘Unprecedented’ Threat From Anthropic’s Mythos AI Model
However, such access may not be forthcoming as Anthropic’s Mythos systems are hosted on strictly-controlled servers in the US, and running tests on local data in foreign jurisdictions could prove challenging, said a fourth source aware of the matter.
Until now, access to Mythos has only been available to a limited number of US organisations engaged in the upkeep of critical digital infrastructure. Anthropic plans to provide Mythos access to European banks soon, Reuters reported earlier this week. Another source told Reuters that there are compliance concerns when testing Indian consumer data on overseas servers. Payment system providers must keep all transaction data, including user information and payment messages, exclusively on Indian servers in accordance with India’s 2018 data localisation regulations.
Sources by NDTV also said that the RBI is preparing broader guidelines for banks entering enterprise partnerships with advanced AI models, including Mythos and Anthropic’s Claude family, as part of a longer‑term strategy on AI adoption. The discussions are at an early stage, but the central bank will insist that all analytics based on data of Indian customers comply with RBI’s domestic data localisation, the sources said.
