It’s clear now that the next revolution in AI technology is AI search engines. Rather than looking through a list of websites to visit, these tools generate a rundown of what you searched. There are obviously major issues with this approach, but that’s not stopping companies from releasing their own AI search engines. Anthropic just announced that Claude 3.7 Sonnet can search the web.
Claude can now search the web
It was only a matter of time before the Amazon and Google-funded AI startup brought this feature. While not as big as Google or OpenAI, Anthropic has been making some rather ambitious AI products. It’s working on a model that can pilot your computer for you.
On Thursday, the company unveiled that its Claude 3.7 Sonnet model can now search the web for you. Just like other tools, you won’t see a list of web pages. Rather, you’ll see a chatbot-style rundown of what you searched for. Since it’s a search engine, it will still show the sources that it reached out to.
In the GIF that Anthropic used to showcase the feature, we see that the sources are shown only for a short amount of time before the AI takes over. We would have to see this in action to know for sure, however. The fact of the matter is that it’s similar to the other AI search engines out there.
Not everyone can search the web with Claude at the moment. This feature is only available to paying customers in the U.S. Of course, this feature will make it to more users as time goes on, so stay tuned.
There’s a bad side
As innovative as AI search engines are, we can’t forget the overall threat that it presents. For instance, a new study revealed that AI search engines link to more than 90% fewer websites compared to traditional search engines. Many sites have had to shutter because tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, and AI Overviews are stealing traffic.
This is an issue that some companies acknowledge by linking to a short list (a VERY short list) of sources. While this technology can save time, there’s no telling if it will cause more harm than good.
