On Wednesday, Anthropic unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature for its Claude chatbot, enabling users to create interactive applications powered by AI. Users will have the capability to design, host, and share these applications on the platform, allowing others to engage with them. Notably, when others utilize these applications, the developers will not incur any application programming interface (API) charges; rather, these costs will be deducted from the user’s subscription.
Claude Can Now Build And Host Apps
The AI company elaborated on this new feature in a recent newsroom post. While code generation is an established capability within the chatbot, the introduction of the Artifact feature in June 2024 marked a significant enhancement. This sandbox-style window enables collaboration between Claude and the user on coding projects, broadening the platform’s coding functionalities.
With the latest update, Anthropic has enhanced Artifact further by allowing Claude to not only draft the code but also execute it within that environment. This upgrade means users can now preview the end product of their AI-powered applications and interact directly with them. Once developed, these applications can be hosted on Anthropic’s servers for sharing among users, with the AI integration managed through Claude’s API.
Significantly, when another user interacts with these applications, the original developer is exempt from any API fees. Instead, costs will be charged to the user’s subscription upon authentication with their Claude account. There is no requirement for users to manage API keys themselves.
Anthropic has emphasized that this feature enables users to utilize the Claude API within their artifacts, allowing for file processing and the creation of unique user interfaces (UIs) using React. Users are also afforded the flexibility to manually customize any artifact.
However, there are limitations to the new feature. It currently does not support external API calls, and there is no provision for persistent storage, meaning data will be lost once the application is closed. Additionally, only text-based completions API is supported, which constrains the potential applications that developers can create. Importantly, this feature is presently in beta for all Claude users.
