Report: Anthropic Quietly Nerfed Reverse-Engineering Capabilities of Claude Opus 5.5
Reddit users reported that after the Claude product update on October 21, Opus 5.5 is being blocked by safety guards mid-output when reverse-engineering copyrighted content, and rephrasing fails to generate an analysis. Anthropic has not officially announced a new version, though it has previously made silent adjustments to model capabilities.
Anthropic Reportedly Silently Weakened Claude Opus 5.5's Reverse Engineering Capabilities
After a series of Claude product updates were rolled out on October 21, Reddit users reported that when they asked Opus 5.5 to reverse engineer copyrighted content, the safety guardrails would intercept the output midway. Even rephrasing the request failed to generate any analysis.
Anthropic has not officially announced a new version, but it has a precedent of silently adjusting model capabilities. A few users believe the classifier is inherently sensitive and that success rates depend on luck. Some have linked this change to incidents like using Claude to modify the always-on microphone firmware on Samsung TVs.
Source: IT Home (https://www.ithome.com/1/017/554.htm)