Amazon-backed Anthropic brings Claude AI chatbot to European users

Amazon and Google-backed AI startup Anthropic launches its powerful Claude chatbot in Europe, boasting strong language skills and real-time information access. Cointelegraph put it to the test.

The artificial intelligence (AI) developer Anthropic announced that its AI chatbot Claude is now available in Europe for use by both individuals and businesses, according to a blog post. 

On May 14, the company said that its AI assistant is now accessible via its web application and iOS app with “strong levels of comprehension and fluency” in multiple European languages, including French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Claude is now available in Europe: https://t.co/uLbS2JNczH pic.twitter.com/WMS51FaMCS

— Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) May 14, 2024

The development follows the launch of Claude 3, its most powerful system that can analyze images, in the United States in March 2024. Previously, to access the chatbot, Europeans could only do so by using a virtual private network (VPN). 

The announcement comes shortly after its launch of the Claude API in Europe earlier this year — a feature that allows developers to integrate Anthropic’s AI models into applications, websites, or services.

Cointelegraph reached out to Anthropic for further information on its European release.

Users on X have been commenting on Claude’s emergence in Europe, noting that while ChatGPT still excels in reasoning, Claude is demonstrating superior eloquence in writing.

While writing quality can be somewhat subjective, our European correspondent Savannah Fortis put Claude 3 to the test in a small head-to-head with ChatGPT. In both instances, the free version of the chatbots was used.

Related: Mistral AI startup launches LLM to take on ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude

When prompted to “write a short poem about Europe,” both chatbots incorporated key elements of multiple European countries as a part of the content of the poem. 

However, Claude’s writing quality stood out and was more accurate in providing a “short poem” with only a handful of stanzas.

Claude’s poem was more coherent as a full story, whereas ChatGPT had nice rhymes on theme, though they sounded more like phrases put together rather than telling a story.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former members of rival AI developer OpenAI. Over the last year it has secured investments from some of the biggest names in tech, including Amazon who committed an investment of up to $4 billion in September 2023 and a $2 billion commitment from Google the month after.

On April 5, Anthropic launched a beta of its feature “tool use” for all Anthropic Message API users for the Claude suite of generative artificial intelligence (AI) models.

This enables real-time information lookup, access and integration of third-party features into Claude’s workflow; allowing users to insert code snippets to their account to allow Claude to bring in outside information into conversations.