4-3-2024 (SAN FRANCISCO) Anthropic, a startup with backing from tech giants Google and Amazon.com, announced on Monday the launch of its latest suite of artificial intelligence models, known as Claude 3. This move further intensifies the ongoing competition in Silicon Valley to bring increasingly powerful AI technology to market.
According to Anthropic, its flagship model, Claude 3 Opus, surpasses rival models GPT-4 from OpenAI and Gemini 1.0 Ultra from Google in various benchmark exams. CEO Dario Amodei described Claude 3 Opus as the “Rolls-Royce of models” in the current landscape of AI technology.
While advances from competitors have been either previewed or anticipated, the claims made by Anthropic have not been independently verified by Reuters.
This announcement comes shortly after a series of rival unveilings, as well as Anthropic’s release of Claude 2 in July. It highlights the fierce competition among companies to achieve top rankings in AI performance, while businesses are still grappling with how to effectively utilize such technology.
Daniela Amodei, the President of Anthropic, stated that customers would choose Claude 3 Opus despite its higher price if they required AI capable of handling complex cognitive tasks, such as accurate financial analysis.
Anthropic disclosed that Claude 3 is its first “multimodal” AI suite. This means that, similar to some rival models, Anthropic’s AI can respond to both text queries and images, enabling it to analyze photos and charts. This concept of “generative” AI, popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, allows the AI to create new content on demand.
CEO Amodei explained that while Claude 3 can examine images, it does not generate them extensively, as there has been less demand from enterprise clients for this feature. This decision comes after Google recently paused image-generation capabilities for its Gemini chatbot due to inaccuracies, such as depicting 1940s Nazi soldiers with racially diverse backgrounds instead of accurately portraying them as white.
Anthropic stated that its Claude 3 models will be available through Amazon and Google’s cloud platforms. It also plans to directly sell access to these models in 159 countries worldwide.
