Anthropic releases new AI model that can communicate with any desktop app

Anthropic has released an updated version of Claude 3.5 Sonnet with Computer Use feature. It breaks the prompts into user commands for desktop use. The company has also announced a new Claude 3.5 Haiku AI model.

In Short

• Claude 3.5 Sonnet is better than OpenAI o1-preview in coding, claims Anthropic
• The Computer Use feature is essentially designed to work similar to a person working at a PC
• Claude 3.5 Haiku is the most efficient model in the series at a lower price

Anthropic has recently announced its new AI models -- an updated Claude 3.5 Sonnet and new Claude 3.5 Haiku. The enhanced Claude 3.5 Sonnet offers improvements across all areas compared to its predecessor, with especially notable advancements in coding, a domain where it was already a leader. Claude 3.5 Haiku achieves comparable performance to Claude 3 Opus, the previous largest model, in many assessments, while maintaining the same cost and speed as the earlier Haiku version. But the highlight here is the new Computer Use feature, which is a noteworthy addition in the public beta phase of the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model. Let's look at all the new entities in detail.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet with Computer Use

Anthropic stated that the updated Claude 3.5 Sonnet shows wide-ranging improvements on industry benchmarks, with particularly strong gains in agentic coding and tool-use tasks. This model can now perform any desktop-level commands. This means that with the ability to browse the web, Claude 3.5 Sonnet can use any website and any application on the desktop.

However, the concerns of AI taking over rise here. On this, the company has stated that humans remain in control. TechCrunch reported that users will be over all the tasks by providing specific prompts that give Claude's actions a way. The Computer Use feature breaks down the user's prompts into computer commands to achieve a certain task.

According to the company, the updated version is simply a better and stronger model. It claims that the 3.5 Sonnet scored higher on coding performance than other popular models, including OpenAI o1.

In the announcement, the company shared, "Early customer feedback suggests the upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet represents a significant leap for AI-powered coding." Developers can access Computer Use through Anthropic’s API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform. The updated 3.5 Sonnet, without Computer Use, is being introduced to Claude apps, offering several performance enhancements compared to the previous 3.5 Sonnet model.

But perfection is yet to come. Anthropic acknowledges that the improved 3.5 Sonnet has difficulty with simple tasks like scrolling and zooming, and may miss "short-lived" actions and notifications due to the method it uses to capture and assemble screenshots. “Claude’s Computer Use remains slow and often error-prone,” Anthropic writes in its post. “We encourage developers to begin exploration with low-risk tasks.”

Claude 3 Haiku

Anthropic announced that an updated version of Haiku, the most affordable and efficient model in its Claude series, is coming soon. The upcoming Claude 3.5 Haiku, set to launch in the next few weeks, will deliver performance on par with Claude 3 Opus, previously Anthropic’s most advanced model, on specific benchmarks, while maintaining the same cost and "similar speed" as Claude 3 Haiku.

“With low latency, improved instruction following, and more accurate tool use, Claude 3.5 Haiku is well suited for user-facing products, specialised sub-agent tasks, and generating personalised experiences from huge volumes of data–like purchase history, pricing, or inventory data,” Anthropic wrote in a blog post.

Claude 3.5 Haiku will initially be available as a text-only model and later as part of a multimodal package that can analyse both text and images.