The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has told employees they can no longer use Claude, a generative artificial intelligence tool from Anthropic, as President Donald Trump seeks to blacklist the company from the federal government.
While Claude is now off-limits, similar tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise and Google Gemini “remain available for authorized mission-related use,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard confirmed to Fierce Biotech.
The loss of Claude could hinder efforts at the FDA to hasten the drug review process, which has been marked by multiple delays during Trump’s second term. Last summer, the regulator rushed to launch an AI tool called Elsa a month ahead of schedule as part of a plan to speed up new product reviews.
Elsa was originally developed based on Claude, according to a report from Stat.
At the time of publication, Hilliard had not responded to questions from Fierce about how the banning of Claude will impact the FDA’s workflow.
According to an internal agency email viewed by the news site NOTUS, HHS employees were told today that they “will no longer be able to log in to or access Claude through the HHS enterprise environment.”
“Please discontinue any ongoing use of the platform and transition your work to one of the department’s other approved enterprise AI solutions,” the email from the FDA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer said, according to NOTUS.
That official internal announcement was preceded by another email from the HHS’ deputy chief AI officer Arman Sharma on Friday, warning that Claude was soon set to be disabled, according to FedScoop.
Trump ordered the government to begin phasing out use of Anthropic’s products in a Feb. 27 post on Truth Social, following disagreements between the company and the Department of Defense about how its AI tools are used. Anthropic’s competitor OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, quickly swooped in to take its rival’s place in the government’s good graces.