Anthropic Launches Newest AI Model, Three Months after its Last

The arrival of ChatGPT sent shockwaves through the journalism industry. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
The arrival of ChatGPT sent shockwaves through the journalism industry. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
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Anthropic Launches Newest AI Model, Three Months after its Last

The arrival of ChatGPT sent shockwaves through the journalism industry. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
The arrival of ChatGPT sent shockwaves through the journalism industry. Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP

Anthropic, a startup backed by Google and Amazon.com, on Thursday released an updated artificial intelligence model and a new layout to boost user productivity, continuing an industry sprint to push technology's frontier.

Three months after rolling out its Claude 3 family of AI models, Anthropic said it was launching Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Compared with Claude 3 Opus - which CEO Dario Amodei in March called the "Rolls-Royce of models" - Anthropic's latest system scores higher on benchmark exams, runs about twice as fast, and is priced for software developers at a fifth the cost.

AI "models are a bit more fungible than cars," Amodei told Reuters. "I don't have to buy them and hold onto them for 20 years. That's one advantage of our field."

Like Anthropic, ChatGPT's creator OpenAI, Google and others are similarly touting AI advances at a breakneck pace.

For consumers, Anthropic has made its latest technology available for free at Claude.ai and in an iOS app. It also is letting web users opt into a setting called "Artifacts." This organizes the content that users prompt Claude to generate - whether the outline for a novel or a simple computer game - in a window display alongside their chat with the AI.

Coupled with a new group subscription plan, Amodei said Artifacts was a step towards "being able to work collaboratively" and "being able to use your model to produce finished products."

Anthropic plans to release more AI models this year, including Claude 3.5 Opus, it said. "We want to have as fast a release cycle as we can, again, subject to our safety values," Amodei said.



Trump Extends Deadline for TikTok Sale by 90 Days

FILE PHOTO: A TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Trump Extends Deadline for TikTok Sale by 90 Days

FILE PHOTO: A TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he had given social media platform TikTok another 90 days to find a non-Chinese buyer or be banned in the United States.

"I've just signed the Executive Order extending the Deadline for the TikTok closing for 90 days (September 17, 2025)," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, putting off the ban for the third time.

A federal law requiring TikTok's sale or ban on national security grounds was due to take effect the day before Trump's January inauguration.

The Republican, whose 2024 election campaign relied heavily on social media, has previously said he is fond of the video-sharing app.

"I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok," Trump said in an NBC News interview in early May. "If it needs an extension, I would be willing to give it an extension."

TikTok on Thursday welcomed Trump's decision.

"We are grateful for President Trump's leadership and support in ensuring that TikTok continues to be available for more than 170 million American users," the platform said in a statement.

Digital Cold War?

Motivated by a belief in Washington that TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government, the ban took effect on January 19, one day before Trump's inauguration, with ByteDance having made no attempt to find a suitor.

TikTok "has become a symbol of the US-China tech rivalry; a flashpoint in the new Cold War for digital control," said Shweta Singh, an assistant professor of information systems at Warwick Business School in Britain.

Trump had long supported a ban or divestment, but reversed his position and vowed to defend the platform -- which boasts almost two billion global users -- after coming to believe it helped him win young voters' support in the November election.

The president announced an initial 75-day delay of the ban upon taking office. A second extension pushed the deadline to June 19.

He said in May that a group of purchasers was ready to pay TikTok owner ByteDance "a lot of money" for the video-clip-sharing sensation's US operations.

Trump knows that TikTok is "wildly popular" in the United States, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday, when asked about the latest extension.

"He also wants to protect Americans' data and privacy concerns on this app, and he believes we can do both things at the same time."

The president is "just not motivated to do anything about TikTok," said independent analyst Rob Enderle. "Unless they get on his bad side, TikTok is probably going to be in pretty good shape."

Tariff turmoil

Trump said in April that China would have agreed to a deal on the sale of TikTok if it were not for a dispute over his tariffs on Beijing.

ByteDance has confirmed talks with the US government, saying key matters needed to be resolved and that any deal would be "subject to approval under Chinese law."

Possible solutions reportedly include seeing existing US investors in ByteDance roll over their stakes into a new independent global TikTok company.

Additional US investors, including Oracle and private equity firm Blackstone, would be brought on to reduce ByteDance's share in the new TikTok.

Much of TikTok's US activity is already housed on Oracle servers, and the company's chairman, Larry Ellison, is a longtime Trump ally.

Uncertainty remains, particularly over what would happen to TikTok's valuable algorithm.

"TikTok without its algorithm is like Harry Potter without his wand -- it's simply not as powerful," said Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at Forrester.

Despite the turmoil, TikTok has been continuing with business as usual.

The platform on Monday introduced a new "Symphony" suite of generative artificial intelligence tools for advertisers to turn words or photos into video snippets for the platform.