Anthropic’s Claude, an AI-powered chatbot, has been updated to include the capability of searching the web, a feature it previously lacked. This web search feature is now in preview for paid users in the United States, as announced on Anthropic’s blog. The company plans to extend this support to free users and additional countries in the near future. Users can activate the web search option via their profile settings within the Claude web application, enabling Claude to search across websites to provide more informed responses.
Currently, web search functionality is exclusive to the latest Anthropic model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet. The company clarified that when Claude uses web information in its responses, it provides direct citations to facilitate source verification. Instead of requiring users to find search results independently, Claude processes and delivers pertinent sources in a conversational manner. This improvement significantly broadens Claude’s knowledge base by integrating real-time insights, thereby offering answers based on more up-to-date information.
With the addition of web search capabilities, Claude now matches the features of several competing AI-powered chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Mistral’s Le Chat. Previously, Anthropic maintained that Claude was “designed to be self-contained.” However, it appears that competitive pressures influenced this strategic shift.
