What is Claude?

Claude is a family of large language models (LLMs) and a generative AI chatbot developed by the AI research company Anthropic. It is designed to be a helpful, harmless, and honest AI assistant.

Key Features and Principles

• Constitutional AI: A core philosophy that sets Claude apart is its “Constitutional AI” approach. This means it is trained to adhere to a set of ethical principles and rules, which are designed to reduce harmful or biased outputs and make its responses safer and more aligned with human values.
• Multimodal Capabilities: Recent versions of Claude, such as the Claude 3 and 4 families, are multimodal. This means they can process and analyze both text and images, allowing users to upload documents, charts, or photos and ask questions about them.
• Long Context Window: Claude models are known for their ability to handle very long prompts and documents. They can process hundreds of pages of text at once, making them highly effective for summarizing, analyzing, and answering questions about large documents.
• Model Family: Instead of just one model, Anthropic offers a family of models with varying capabilities and costs, allowing users to choose the right one for their needs. For example, the Claude 3 family includes:
  • Haiku: The fastest and most affordable model for simple, quick tasks.
  • Sonnet: A balanced model that provides a good mix of intelligence and speed for most enterprise workloads.
  • Opus: The most intelligent and capable model for complex reasoning and advanced tasks.
• Advanced Reasoning and Code Generation: Claude is widely recognized for its strong performance in complex reasoning, coding, and generating nuanced, high-quality content. It is often a preferred tool for developers, writers, and researchers.

Claude is available through a web interface, APIs, and mobile apps, and it competes with other leading AI models like OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini.