TECH

Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude has received a major upgrade, allowing it to search the web for real-time information and current data.

By Aniket  Chakraborty

Mar 24, 2025

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The new web search feature is currently available in preview mode exclusively for paid users in the United States, with global rollout expected later in 2025.

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Claude's web search can be activated by toggling it ON in the user profile settings within Claude's interface.

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The feature works only with Claude 3.7 Sonnet model, which has a knowledge cutoff of November 2024.

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When using web search, Claude provides direct citations with clickable links, allowing users to verify information from original sources.

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This update brings Claude on par with competitors like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Mistral's Le Chat, which already offer web browsing capabilities.

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Tech outlets speculate that Brave Search might be the search engine powering Claude's web capabilities, though Anthropic hasn't officially confirmed this.

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The web search functionality transforms Claude into a more powerful tool for news updates, academic research, business insights, and health information.

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This marks a shift from Anthropic's previous position that Claude was "designed to be self-contained" to a more dynamic, real-time assistant.

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A study by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism found that AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Gemini gave incorrect answers to over 60% of questions, highlighting potential concerns with web-searching AI.

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