Anthropic is releasing new features for its AI chatbot, Claude, that let anyone create email assistants, shoe-buying bots, and other personalized solutions. It's called “tooling” (or the geekier “function invocation”), and it can connect to any external API.
I don't really like the term “AI agent,” but that's essentially the strategy here. For example, the tool can analyze data to create personalized product recommendations based on a user's purchasing history, or quickly respond to customer inquiries, such as tracking order status or providing real-time technical support. All you need to run the assistant is access to an API and someone who knows how to code.
The tool's ability to work with images also enables applications that analyze visual data: In one example, Anthropic gave, a virtual interior design consultant could use the tool to process images of a room and make personalized decorating suggestions.
The AI assistant will be available through Anthropic's Messages API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Vertex AI. Pricing is based on the amount of text Claude processes, which is measured in “tokens.” Typically, 1,000 tokens equals about 750 words. During the beta phase, most users opted for Anthropic's fastest and most affordable option, Haiku, which costs about 25 cents per million input tokens and $1.25 per million output tokens.
Dianne Penn, project lead at Anthropic, says her team has been beta testing the Claude tool with thousands of customers since April. She expects to see some great startup solutions. One notable customer, Study Fetch, used the tool to build a personalized AI tutor called Spark.E.
AI assistants or agents (whatever you want to call them) seem to be where this technology is headed. At Google I/O, the search giant unveiled various ways that AI will help Google shop and search. At OpenAI, the company sheA voice assistant that can respond in real time and observe the world around you (in a demo, it suggested you get changed before an important job interview).
With the release of this new tool, Anthropic now allows users to create different assistants to meet their needs, with or without Google or OpenAI.
