Anthropic is expanding the capabilities of its Claude chatbot’s voice mode, allowing users to interact with the company’s Opus, Sonnet and Haiku models through voice conversations.

The update comes weeks after rival OpenAI launched a new family of conversational models and upgraded ChatGPT’s voice mode, intensifying competition in the rapidly growing AI assistant market.

Anthropic said on Thursday that Claude’s voice mode, which was launched last year and initially powered by the Haiku model, will now automatically select the last model used by a user in a text conversation.

Anthropic said the updated voice mode is designed to support longer conversations, helping users analyse their communication style, rehearse client pitches and brainstorm product-market research ideas.

Claude’s voice mode can also connect with third-party applications, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Canva and Notion, allowing users to complete tasks through voice commands.

Users can ask Claude to reschedule a meeting, draft an email or create a document in Notion, Anthropic said.

The feature marks a key difference from OpenAI’s voice mode, which has received updates to its conversational capabilities but still has more limited access to external tools for completing tasks.