Anthropic's Claude AI chatbot can now search the web
What's the story
Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude has received a major upgrade: the ability to search the web.
The feature is now available in preview mode for paid users in the US. Free users and those from other countries will soon get access to the facility too.
The web search function can be activated from profile settings within the Claude app itself.
Compatibility
Claude 3.7 Sonnet model supports web search
As of now, the web search feature only works with the latest Anthropic model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
When information from the web is included in its responses, Claude offers direct citations for easy fact-checking by users, as per Anthropic's blog post.
The company stressed that instead of users looking up search results themselves, "Claude processes and delivers relevant sources in a conversational format."
Feature parity
Claude's web search facility matches competitors
The inclusion of web search brings Claude in line with other AI-powered chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Mistral's Le Chat.
It also marks a departure from Anthropic's earlier position that Claude was "designed to be self-contained."
However, there's a risk of hallucinations or misquotations from the web.
A recent Tow Center for Digital Journalism study found popular chatbots including ChatGPT and Gemini gave incorrect answers to over 60% of questions.
User guide
How to use web search in Claude
To use the new web search feature, users will have to head to the settings and turn the web search toggle "on."
Following this, they can begin chatting with Claude 3.7 Sonnet and it will access the web as and when required depending on user queries.
This update builds on Anthropic's newest release and most intelligent model, that has a knowledge cutoff of November 2024.