Anthropic, the AI lab behind the popular Claude chatbot has just dropped a bombshell announcement that nobody expected. As well as a slew of new model updates, we’re now about to enjoy an updated Claude 3.5 Sonnet with Computer Use.
This is a new feature that builds on Artifacts, a tool that lets Claude run code in the browser. Computer Use goes a few steps further though and lets the model control your computer by itself. Scared yet?
To quote the release blurb, ‘developers can now direct Claude to use computers the way people do – by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking and typing text.’ If that doesn’t mean much to you, don’t fret, it’s aimed squarely at developers and programmers — for now!
What is Claude Computer Use?
In case you hadn’t heard, the original Claude Sonnet 3.5 model has gained a huge following from programmers because of its intuitive support for coding tasks. In a lot of cases, it supplanted OpenAI's GPT-4o as the go-to tool as a coding assistant.
This lead was somewhat reduced by OpenAI’s release of the o1 model, but now the ball is firmly back in the Anthropic side of the court with this latest announcement. And that’s not all. The new Sonnet 3.5 has been significantly upgraded in terms of power and performance.
With a focus on the kind of uplift coders will love to see as part of their workflows. Agentic coding support, uprated math and code eval and even a set of specialized vertical application layers pointing at retail and airline applications. Phew!
The company is pitching the new feature strictly at those who use the API, so don’t expect to see it in your chatbot any time soon. Although, with all things, if demand is there that could well change. It may end up a key feature of a future Claude desktop app.
It’s aimed at removing a lot of the drudge that people have to go through to get things done on their computers. In one of the mind-blowing demo videos on the launch site, the presenter shows Claude going through multiple routines to create and edit a personal website.
What can Claude Computer Use do?
Claude 3.5 Sonnet with Computer Use is a form of AI agent, capable of performing a series of tasks from a simple prompt. In the demo video the process involves reading the screen, clicking download buttons, editing code automatically and generally doing what a person would do to get the demo done. It’s science fiction come to life, and developers the world over should be counting the days until they get access.
It’s science fiction come to life, and developers the world over should be counting the days until they get access.
Now the usual caveats apply to the demo. It was done in a ‘controlled’ environment, whatever that means, and we have to assume they edited out all the times when Claude failed for some reason. But even so, this is radically impressive stuff.
Right now there’s an explosion in the number of tools designed to help the programmer do their job quicker and more easily. Tools like CoPilot, Cursor, v0, and CodeCompanion have radically transformed the way small coding projects get done.
With this new release, we’re going to see this type of AI assistance go stratospheric, with incredible productivity increases in everything from small enterprise app development, to open source collaboration.
If you can democratize the coding environment, to allow many more people to contribute, amazing things are possible – not just here in the West, but across the globe. And if these features are included in the rumored upcoming Claude desktop app, the sky will literally be the limit. Grab your hats for a wild ride!
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