· ai-devtools
Anthropic found a way to prove which AI model answered you — but there's a costly catch
Developers using AI APIs have little way of knowing whether the model answering their requests is actually the one they're paying for.
A provider could route requests to a cheaper model, or an attacker could interfere with responses, without customers having an obvious way to detect the switch. Now, Anthropic wants to change that. The company's Frontier Red Team has released FlashProve, an open-source cryptographic system designed to verify which AI model produced a response without exposing its underlying weights.
Announced Tuesday, the research could eventually help developers verify third-party AI services and detect compromised inference systems. But FlashProve remains a research prototype, and the cost of generating proofs makes it impractical for routine API traffic. But FlashProve remains a research prototype, and the cost of generating proofs makes it impractical for routine API traffic.
How FlashProve proves the model FlashProve uses zkSNARKs to verify that a response came from a specific set of model weights without revealing those weights. The commitment still has to come from a trusted source, or the proof means little. Anthropic has released FlashProve on GitHub, where developers can download the code and test the system themselves.
