Claude

Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI researchers. Named after Claude Shannon (the father of information theory), Claude is designed to be helpful, harmless, and honest — reflecting Anthropic's focus on AI safety research.

What Claude does

Like other leading AI assistants, Claude can:

• Engage in detailed, nuanced conversations
• Write and edit content across genres and formats
• Analyse documents, data, and images
• Write, explain, and debug code
• Summarise long texts and extract key information
• Reason through complex problems step by step
• Follow detailed instructions with precision

What distinguishes Claude

• Long context window: Claude supports industry-leading context windows (up to 200K tokens), enabling it to process entire books, codebases, or document collections in a single conversation.
• Safety focus: Anthropic uses Constitutional AI and extensive safety research to make Claude reliable and resistant to producing harmful content.
• Nuanced writing: Claude is often cited for producing well-structured, thoughtful writing with appropriate nuance and caveats.
• Honesty about uncertainty: Claude is designed to express uncertainty rather than bluffing when it does not know something.
• Tool use and agentic capabilities: Claude can use tools, browse the web, execute code, and operate as an agent within larger systems.

Models and tiers

• Claude Haiku: Fast and cost-efficient, designed for high-volume tasks
• Claude Sonnet: Balanced performance and cost for everyday use
• Claude Opus: Highest capability for complex reasoning and analysis

Access options

• claude.ai: Free web and mobile interface with usage limits
• Claude Pro ($20/month): Higher usage limits and priority access
• Claude Team and Enterprise: Business plans with admin controls and data privacy
• API: Developer access for building applications powered by Claude

Claude in business

Claude is used across industries for document analysis, code development, research, content creation, and customer service. Its long context window makes it particularly strong for tasks involving large documents — legal analysis, financial research, and technical documentation.

Anthropic's approach

Anthropic positions itself as an AI safety company. Its research focuses on making AI systems that are reliable, interpretable, and aligned with human values. This safety-first approach influences Claude's design — it tends to be more cautious and transparent about its limitations than some alternatives.