On Thursday, Anthropic introduced web search capabilities for its AI chatbot, Claude. The San Francisco-based technology company had initially launched Claude in March 2023, but until now, it relied solely on its internal knowledge database for information, lacking the ability to fetch real-time data from the Internet. This new feature marks a significant advancement for Claude, which will now be accessible across web, mobile, and desktop applications. Currently, the functionality is available in preview mode and is employed at Claude’s discretion.
Claude Gains Web Search Functionality
The announcement was made through a newsroom post. Notably, Claude had been the only leading AI chatbot without Internet access, while competitors like Gemini, ChatGPT, and others have utilized this functionality for some time. Previously, Anthropic defended its decision to keep Claude “self-contained,” arguing it was designed that way for a reason.
With the newly integrated web search features, Claude can now seek online information for current events. Anthropic emphasized that this enhancement will improve “its accuracy on tasks that benefit from the most recent data.” Initially, the feature is available in preview for paid subscribers in the United States, but the company has plans to extend web search availability to additional countries and free-tier users in the future.
To enable the feature, users must select the Claude 3.7 Sonnet AI model from a menu in the text box and adjust their profile settings to activate web search. Once this is complete, queries that require up-to-date information will invoke the web search capability. It’s important to note that users cannot manually initiate this feature; Claude will autonomously determine when to connect to the Internet for additional data.
Whenever Claude provides responses that incorporate web-derived information, inline citations will be included to allow users to verify sources and explore topics further. Additionally, the URLs and page headlines associated with the retrieved sources will be presented in a dropdown menu above the responses.
