On Thursday, Anthropic unveiled a new web search feature for its AI chatbot, Claude. The San Francisco-based company first launched Claude in March 2023, but until now, the AI had been unable to access the Internet for real-time information, relying solely on its internal knowledge base. This update marks a significant enhancement as the company introduces online capabilities across various platforms, including web, mobile, and desktop applications. Currently, the functionality is available in preview mode and activates only when Claude identifies it as necessary.
Claude Acquires Web Search Functionality
A company announcement in a newsroom post detailed the new feature. Notably, Claude had been the only leading AI chatbot lacking Internet access, while competitors such as Gemini, ChatGPT, Meta AI, Copilot, and DeepSeek have long provided this capability. Previously, Anthropic had defended its decision by asserting that Claude is “designed to be self-contained.”
With the introduction of web search functionality, Claude can now retrieve information about current events from the web. Anthropic has asserted that this new capability will enhance Claude’s accuracy, particularly for tasks requiring the latest data. For the time being, the feature is available in preview mode exclusively for paid subscribers in the United States, with plans to extend it to additional countries and free-tier users in the future.
To enable web search, users must select the Claude 3.7 Sonnet AI model from the menu in the text box. They will also need to adjust their profile settings to toggle on the web search option. Once activated, users can pose queries on topics that require up-to-date information, although they cannot manually initiate the feature; Claude will decide when to utilize the web.
When Claude provides answers incorporating online information, it will include inline citations for users to verify sources and delve deeper into the discussion. The sources will be accessible at the top of the response through a dropdown menu, alongside a new box displaying the search query with prominent spaces for the URL and page title.
