Claude now has Web Search capability
It's absolutely fascinating watching the speed of development in the Artificial Intelligence marketplace these days. What a buzz.
Earlier today I was trying to get Claude to give me some recommendations for a query that really should have been supported by a live (or semi live) web search.
Well, hey presto...!
A few hours later, that feature is now live. Or, coming to your Claude account very soon.
As the release on Anthropic's website highlights, it's only available to Claude's paid US users right now but I would imagine that will extend to all paid users in due course:
Web search is available now in feature preview for all paid Claude users in the United States. Support for users on our free plan and more countries is coming soon. To get started, toggle on web search in your profile settings and start a conversation with Claude 3.7 Sonnet. When applicable, Claude will search the web to inform its response.
It should theoretically dramatically enhance your Claude experience when you're discussing questions or asking for specific information and not necessarily wanting to rely on the 'trillion token pattern matching' reality of LLMs and instead get the data right from the proper information source. Just the other day I was asking about how Postmark's API worked and I would have appreciated Claude bringing me the direct answer courtesy of their website, rather than semi-mysteriously presenting the answer. It's difficult to know if it's hallucinating or actually accurate. So I'm excited to see how Web Search extends the experience for me (and everyone else!)
Nice work Team Anthropic.
