The Claude chatbot is now also able to search the internet, AI developer Anthropic says. The search feature is currently only available to paid end users in the United States.
AI chatbots are a formidable competitor for traditional search engines such as Google Search and Microsoft Bing. OpenAI, among others, offers AI-supported search functionality with ChatGPT Search, and Google is also working hard on this. In addition, Perplexity provides an AI-driven search engine as an alternative.
Anthropic has not been idle and now offers AI-supported web search functionality directly in its AI chatbot Claude. According to the AI developer, this feature should help users get more up-to-date and relevant answers to their search queries. The search functionality works under the hood together with Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
The feature provides direct citations where possible, among other things, so that users can more easily fact-check sources in the results.
Use cases
Anthropic has already developed several use cases for the new web search functionality. These include use cases for sales teams, financial analysts, scientists, and researchers, as well as online shoppers.
The latter can use the functionality to compare more products based on price and reviews, which, says the AI developer, will enable them to make a much better purchasing decision.
Enable via settings
Unlike ChatGPT from competitor OpenAI, the search feature is not accessible in the chatbot via a special button. To use the feature, users must enable it in their profile settings.
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