Anthropic’s Claude Gains Real-Time Web Search for Up-to-Date Insights

Anthropic

Anthropic has announced a major upgrade to its AI assistant, Claude, introducing real-time web search to enhance accuracy and relevance in responses. This new capability is available in feature preview for paid users in the U.S., with plans to expand to free users and additional regions soon.

Claude, first launched in 2023 by ex-OpenAI employees, is known for its strong reasoning, writing, coding, and data analysis skills. While its latest model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, has a knowledge cutoff of October 2024, the AI assistant can now fetch real-time data from the web when needed.

“Web search allows Claude to access the latest information, improving accuracy for queries requiring up-to-date data,” Anthropic stated in an announcement. Unlike always-on browsing, the feature activates only when relevant and includes citations for fact-checking.

TechCrunch, which tested the update, noted that Claude’s web search does not always trigger for recent events, but when it does, it provides multiple sources, including posts from X (formerly Twitter).

Anthropic highlighted several key use cases for this feature, including:

• Sales Teams: Gaining insights into industry trends.

• Financial Analysts: Accessing real-time market data and reports.

• Researchers: Identifying emerging trends and literature gaps.

• Shoppers: Comparing product features, prices, and reviews.

Users can enable web search through profile settings on Claude’s web client or mobile apps. This update comes roughly five months after OpenAI introduced a similar feature for ChatGPT, signaling an ongoing push toward more dynamic and real-time AI assistance.