Anthropic unveils its smartest AI model and coding assistant

SAN FRANCISCO: Anthropic has introduced its most advanced AI model to date, along with a specialised coding assistant designed to support software developers, as the company continues to compete in the fast-evolving artificial intelligence industry.

Along with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the San Francisco-based company is making available, in a limited research preview, a digital "agent" called Claude Code, tailored to be a tool for software developers.

Amazon-backed Anthropic described Claude Code as capable of searching and reading code, editing files, running tests, and more.

The release comes as AI companies are pushing out new products at a rapid pace, with innovations quickly reproduced by rivals, often at a lower cost. This has raised concerns about securing a return on the massive investments being made.

Anthropic’s new model is "much stronger at coding, and particularly at taking over and doing really complicated coding tasks," Anthropic co-founder and chief science officer Jared Kaplan told AFP.

Aside from overall improved intelligence, the latest iteration of Claude has a "hybrid" reasoning model that allows users to receive quick answers to questions or have it spend time mulling over complex queries and sharing the steps in the process, according to Kaplan.

The improvement enables Claude to better follow instructions and handle more sophisticated analyses, he added.

Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, the race has been on to lead in a technology predicted to change the way people live and work.

AI models have moved beyond generating images, videos, or written content to providing "agents" specialising in specific fields or tasks.

OpenAI released a version of ChatGPT about six months ago that shared its "thinking" process, but Anthropic followed by enabling its Claude model to command computers as humans do.

OpenAI responded with the recent release of its first AI agent, called Operator, with similar capabilities.

Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, and its arch-rival are striving to stand out in an increasingly crowded market.

"We try very hard to make model improvements grounded in customer problems," said Anthropic chief product officer Mike Krieger.

"When it’s just newer, better, faster, it’s not as impactful; we try to listen to what people are saying and ensure the next model serves those needs."

Amazon has invested a total of $8 billion in Anthropic, while Google-parent Alphabet has invested $2 billion in the startup.