Anthropic Launches Claude 2: New Competitor for ChatGPT and Bard

Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic makes its AI chatbot available to the public for the first time, creating a new rival to chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.

Anthropic debuts Claude 2

In a blog post on Tuesday, Anthropic announced a new version of their AI chatbot, Claude 2, is easier to chat with than the previous version and can generate longer responses.

Claude 2 is available in beta to the public starting Tuesday, although earlier versions have been integrated into enterprise products including Slack and Zoom. Like other Generative AI chatbots, Claude 2 is powered by a large language model, allowing it to respond to questions and prompts in natural language. Anthropic says Claude 2 can summarize texts, write documents and help with tasks like coding and solving math problems.

Since OpenAI's ChatGPT appeared in late 2022, tech companies have rolled out a multitude of Generative AI tools to the masses. Modern chatbots can generate email responses, travel itineraries and even poetry, etc., although the quality of the results will vary. These tools, trained on massive amounts of information, are programmed to identify patterns and then generate plausible-sounding answers.

However, chatbots tend to give incorrect and sometimes non-existent answers. The rapid adoption of these tools also raises concerns about potential problems, including the spread of misinformation and deepening of bias. Anthropic on Tuesday said Claude 2 is "less likely to produce harmful outputs" than its predecessor.

The blog post reads: "We've iteratively tested to improve Claude 2's basic safety, making it more harmless and harder to produce dangerous output."

The chatbot is currently available in open beta in the US and UK, and Anthoripc says it plans to make Claude 2 available globally in the coming months.

How to try AI chatbot AI Claude 2

Anthropic Launches Claude 2: New Competitor for ChatGPT and Bard Picture 1

If you want to see how Claude 2 compares to other publicly available chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard or Microsoft's Bing, visit Claude.ai.

You will be prompted to enter your email address or sign in with Google. There is also a small message reminding you that Claude 2 is currently in beta and some features may be limited to free users. You will also be prompted to agree to the company's terms, accepted use policy, and privacy policy.

Before using Claude, you'll have to click through several pages of information, including a reminder that the chatbot is not intended to provide "legal, financial and medical advice" and that some chats may be reviewed to improve companies' safety systems.

After accessing the chatbot, you can start typing prompts or questions. Anthropic offers some suggestions, such as "summarize this PDF into a bulleted outline" and "help me practice my Spanish vocabulary".

Isabella Humphrey

Update 24 July 2023