What is Claude AI and who makes it?

Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic, an AI safety and research company based in San Francisco. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of researchers, several of whom had previously worked at OpenAI, with a strong focus on building AI systems that are safe and reliable.

You can use Claude in several ways. There is the Claude app on the web at claude.ai, desktop apps for Windows and Mac, and mobile apps for Android and iPhone. Developers can build Claude into their own software through Anthropic's API. There is also Claude Code, a tool aimed at programmers that can read a codebase, write and edit code, and run commands. Claude is also available inside tools like Chrome, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Slack.

Claude can handle a wide range of everyday and professional tasks: writing and editing, summarising long documents, analysing data, explaining difficult topics, translating, brainstorming and coding. It can read uploaded files such as PDFs, spreadsheets and images. It can also create artifacts, which are finished pieces of work like documents, slide decks, web pages or small apps that appear alongside the chat and can be edited and shared.

Anthropic releases Claude as a family of models in different sizes. Haiku models are fast and inexpensive, suited to quick and high-volume tasks. Sonnet models balance speed and capability and are the everyday workhorse for many users. Opus models are the most capable of the three for complex reasoning, deep analysis and difficult coding. Anthropic has also introduced a more powerful Mythos tier. New versions arrive regularly, so the model picker in the app shows what is currently available.

What makes Claude stand out for many people is its writing quality, which tends to sound natural and well organised, and its ability to work with very long documents. Anthropic also trains Claude using a published set of principles, sometimes described as a constitution, which guides how it balances being helpful with being honest and avoiding harm.

There is a free plan with usage limits, and paid plans that offer higher limits and access to more advanced models and features. If you are trying Claude for the first time, start with a real task from your work, such as summarising a report or improving an email, and you will quickly see whether its style suits you.