Sweden's government blocks ChatGPT and Claude, keeps Copilot

Starting Monday, October 26, 2026, the people who support Sweden's prime minister and cabinet will type chatgpt.com or claude.ai on a work computer and get nowhere.

What happened. Sweden's Government Offices (Regeringskansliet, the Prime Minister's Office plus the ministries) is blocking the browser versions of ChatGPT and Claude on staff computers. Sveriges Radio's Ekot reported it first on October 23, and the Government Offices confirmed it in an email to SVT: "The browser interface for the AI services ChatGPT and Claude will no longer be reachable from the Government Offices' work computers from October 26."

• Why: Digitalisation director Mikael Wettercrantz wrote on the staff intranet that using AI services without a contract can have "consequences for our information security." He declined an interview with Ekot.
• What staff get instead: Microsoft Copilot, which the Government Offices approved and, after a review, made stricter. The press office won't say what was tightened, citing security.
• The exception: Some staff keep access to ChatGPT and Claude models through Intric, an AI assistant platform the Government Offices uses internally.
• Not the first: Ekot found similar blocks already in place at the Swedish Tax Agency and the National Board of Institutional Care (SiS), and the Enforcement Authority is preparing its own decision. An internal audit at the Transport Administration found widespread, risky use of about ten AI services.

The joke writes itself. Microsoft offers Anthropic's models inside Copilot. Notebookcheck notes they are off by default in the EU and have to be switched on by an admin, and the Government Offices hasn't said whether it did. So the ban is less "no Claude" than "no Claude without a contract."

Our take. This is the sensible version of an AI ban. The risk with consumer chatbots at work isn't which model answers. It's that a prompt typed into a personal account runs under the provider's default terms, with no agreement on retention, location or training. A contract with settings someone reviewed fixes that, whichever model is behind it. If your company still lets staff paste work into free chatbot accounts, Stockholm just showed you the cheaper fix: one approved door, with the settings checked.

What we did and didn't do: we read the Sveriges Radio, SVT, Dagens industri, Decrypt and Notebookcheck reports on October 25, 2026. We did not contact the Government Offices, and we don't know which models its Copilot setup has turned on. Not sponsored; no affiliate links.