Anthropic has announced that its AI-powered chatbot, Claude, now has the capability to search the web—an upgrade that brings it in line with its competitors.
In a blog post, the company revealed that web search is currently available in preview for paid Claude users in the United States. Support for free-tier users and additional regions is expected to roll out soon. Users can enable the feature in their profile settings through the Claude web app, allowing the chatbot to automatically source information from the internet to enhance its responses.
At present, the web search function is limited to Claude 3.7 Sonnet, the latest iteration of Anthropic’s AI model.
“When Claude incorporates information from the web into its responses, it provides direct citations so you can easily fact-check sources,” the company stated. “Instead of finding search results yourself, Claude processes and delivers relevant sources in a conversational format. This enhancement expands Claude’s extensive knowledge base with real-time insights, providing answers based on more current information.”
Early tests of the feature indicate that web search does not always activate for questions related to current events. However, when it does, Claude presents responses with inline citations, pulling information from sources such as social media (e.g., X) and news outlets like NPR and Reuters.
Claude’s web search capability brings it on par with AI-powered chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Mistral’s Le Chat. Anthropic had previously maintained that Claude was “designed to be self-contained,” but industry competition may have influenced its decision to introduce the feature.
However, concerns remain over the reliability of AI-generated information. Other AI chatbots have been known to produce inaccurate or misleading responses. A recent study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that popular chatbots, including ChatGPT and Gemini, provided incorrect answers in more than 60% of cases.
Additionally, a report from The Guardian highlighted how ChatGPT’s search-focused tool, ChatGPT Search, could be manipulated into generating misleading summaries.
