The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has told employees they can no longer use Claude, Anthropic’s generative artificial intelligence tool, as President Donald Trump seeks to place the company on a federal blacklist.
Although Claude is currently off-limits, similar tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise and Google Gemini “remain available for authorized mission-related use,” HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard confirmed to Fierce Biotech.
Claude’s loss could hamper the FDA’s efforts to speed up the drug review process, which was repeatedly delayed during President Trump’s second term. Last summer, regulators rushed to launch an AI tool called Elsa a month ahead of schedule as part of a plan to speed up the review of new products.
According to a report from Stat, Elsa was originally developed based on Claude.
At the time of publication, Hilliard had not responded to Fierce’s questions about how Claude’s ban would affect the FDA’s workflow.
HHS employees were told today that they “will no longer be able to log in to or access Claude through the HHS enterprise environment,” according to an internal agency email viewed by the news site NOTUS.
According to NOTUS, the email from the FDA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer said, “Please discontinue your continued use of the platform and migrate your operations to other department-approved enterprise AI solutions.”
The formal internal announcement was preceded by another email on Friday from Armand Sharma, HHS’ deputy AI chief, warning that Claude would soon be deactivated, FedScoop reported.
In a Feb. 27 post on Truth Social, President Trump ordered the government to begin phasing out the use of Anthropic products after disagreements between the company and the Department of Defense over how to use its AI tools. Anthropic’s competitor OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, quickly swooped in to steal its rival’s spot in government favor.
