On Tuesday, Anthropic unveiled a new feature for its AI chatbot Claude, enabling it to produce responses that align with users’ preferred writing styles. Known as Custom Style, this feature aims to tailor the chatbot’s output to resonate with the user’s typical writing and reading preferences. Users can choose from three predefined options or upload their own writing sample to influence the AI’s style. The feature has been made available to all Claude users.
Anthropic Unveils Custom Styles in Claude
While large language model (LLM)-powered chatbots can produce content on an array of topics, writing style can often be a limiting factor. The AI may generate overly formal responses that are unsuitable for casual conversation or employ overly elaborate language that may not be appropriate for academic writing.
Some AI applications, including Google’s Gemini in Gmail and Docs and Samsung’s Galaxy AI in Notes, provide users with preset options to modulate the tone of generated text. However, such flexibility has typically been absent in leading AI chatbots, requiring users to specify their desired writing style with each prompt.
Custom Styles feature in Claude
Photo Credit: Anthropic
In a recent announcement shared on their newsroom blog, Anthropic highlighted the launch of the Custom Styles feature, which simplifies the customization of responses. This functionality is accessible to all users across various platforms. To utilize it, users can navigate to Claude and look for a new quill icon located at the bottom of the text input field, adjacent to the AI model selection button.
By clicking the icon, users are presented with four preset styles: Normal, Concise, Formal, and Explanatory. The Formal option yields polished responses, while the Concise setting focuses on brevity and directness. According to Anthropic, the Explanatory style is tailored for educational purposes, designed to assist users in learning new concepts.
Additionally, users have the option to create their own custom styles. This process is straightforward; clicking on the “Create and Edit Styles” option opens a new window where users can either paste a sample of their writing or upload a document. Claude then analyzes the text for elements such as writing structure, tone, and word choice.
Staff members from Gadgets 360 have had the opportunity to test this new feature. While it appears to function correctly, practical usage revealed that the AI struggled to capture specific writing nuances, often adhering only to general stylistic guidelines.
