Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, is now available in Europe, arriving shortly after the latest release from its Microsoft-backed rival, ChatGPT.
Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives and researchers, is an AI safety research company supported by investors like Google and Amazon. As of Tuesday, European users can access Claude.ai, the web-based version, the free Claude iOS app, and the Claude Team plan for businesses. Claude supports multiple European languages, including French, Spanish, German, and Italian.
“We’re excited to launch in Europe because the region is well-positioned to harness AI benefits,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Euronews Next. Claude is designed to avoid biases, discrimination, and hate speech, offering reliable and accessible AI for all while respecting cultural nuances.
Anthropic’s latest and most powerful large language model (LLM) launched in March, featuring three models: Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus. The company claims Opus outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini Ultra in reasoning, basic maths, and advanced knowledge tests. Unlike ChatGPT’s paid version, Claude allows the upload and processing of long documents, summarizing up to 200,000 tokens.
Anthropic emphasizes AI safety, using a method called Constitutional AI to moderate itself, reducing biases compared to previous models. Measures against misinformation and disinformation, particularly in elections, are a priority, with bans on political campaign use and automated systems to detect misuse.
Privacy is also a focus; prompts are not used to train models without permission, and data is retained for only 90 days. The Claude Pro plan costs €18, slightly less than ChatGPT-4, while the team plan is €28 + VAT per user per month, with a minimum of five seats. More updates are expected in the coming weeks.
