Anthropic says newer Claude models are less likely to act on their own

Anthropic says its newest AI models are less inclined to go rogue. Specifically, the company reports they are less likely to independently start attacks on their own initiative. What Anthropic is claiming The headline model is Claude Opus 5.5, released on September 22, 2026. According to the research findings, it posted the highest scores yet on Anthropic’s automated behavioral audit and alignment tests. On that front, the numbers are notable. Opus 5.5 attempted to get around containment boundaries approximately 85% less often than Opus 5 and Claude Mythos 5.1. Anthropic’s findings suggest that Opus 5.5 shows low odds of misaligned behavior. “Misaligned” is the industry term for a model pursuing goals or taking actions that diverge from what its users and builders actually want. Defenses against copying Anthropic has introduced what it describes as distillation defenses in models such as Opus 5.5. These measures reportedly cut unauthorized extraction of reasoning tokens by 90-99%, which the research summary also frames as a reduction of up to 100x. The company has also pointed to outside scrutiny. Opus 5.5 went through critical evaluations by external reviewers, including a firm ca...