Claude AI catches up with ChatGPT by offering a new search tool

By Bryan M. Wolfe Published March 21, 2025

Claude on a MacBook Pro. — Bryan M. Wolfe / Digital Trends

If you’re looking for a new search tool, Claude may help. The AI assistant now features a new web search tool that allows users to access current events and information to enhance their results. The new search feature provides direct citations, allowing you to verify sources easily. Furthermore, Claude organizes and presents relevant sources in a conversational format, making the results easier to digest.

Anthropic states that the new search feature is handy for various users and use cases. These include sales teams seeking to analyze industry trends, financial analysts looking for up-to-date market data, and researchers who need content for grant proposals and literature reviews. Additionally, everyday shoppers can benefit from the tool as it helps them compare product features and prices.

Recommended Videos

At launch, Claude’s web search capabilities were only available to premium customers based in the U.S. Additionally, they only worked with Claude 3.7 Sonnet. This model is the company’s first that can provide quick responses and step-by-step problem-solving. Claude Pro is priced at $20 per month or $214.99 per year.

The new search tool was hinted at about a month ago.

Incorporating web search capabilities for real-time information gathering is a significant advancement in AI. OpenAI introduced this feature in ChatGPT late last year, initially making it available only to paying subscribers. Now, it is accessible to everyone at no cost. While there are no guarantees, it would not be surprising if Claude eventually offered web search for free as well.

Claude can be accessed from its website, iOS and Android apps, and desktop versions.

Claude first went online in December 2022 when Anthropic released it as a limited beta product for a small group of users. This initial release was part of a closed beta that showcased Claude’s capabilities to early testers. Claude’s first widely available version was launched in March 2023, when Anthropic released it to a broader audience through an API and partnerships with companies such as Quora’s Poe and other platforms.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Topics

Tech News

Mobile and A/V Freelancer

Bryan M. Wolfe has over a decade of experience as a technology writer. He writes about mobile.

Computing

ChatGPT now interprets photos better than an art critic and an investigator combined

OpenAI press image

ChatGPT's recent image generation capabilities have challenged our previous understanding of AI-generated media. The recently announced GPT-4o model demonstrates noteworthy abilities of interpreting images with high accuracy and recreating them with viral effects, such as that inspired by Studio Ghibli. It even masters text in AI-generated images, which has previously been difficult for AI. And now, it is launching two new models capable of dissecting images for cues to gather far more information that might even fail a human glance.

OpenAI announced two new models earlier this week that take ChatGPT's thinking abilities up a notch. Its new o3 model, which OpenAI calls its "most powerful reasoning model" improves on the existing interpretation and perception abilities, getting better at "coding, math, science, visual perception, and more," the organization claims. Meanwhile, the o4-mini is a smaller and faster model for "cost-efficient reasoning" in the same avenues. The news follows OpenAI's recent launch of the GPT-4.1 class of models, which brings faster processing and deeper context.

Computing

You can now view all of your ChatGPT-generated images in one place

ChatGPT library promotion video.

OpenAI did text generation and image generation separately for quite a while, but that all changed a couple of weeks ago when it added image capabilities directly into ChatGPT. Now, a small but powerful Quality of Life update gives users access to an image library where they can see all of the insane things they've created.

https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/1912255254512722102

Computing

ChatGPT can now remember more details from your past conversations

ChatGPT on a laptop

OpenAI has just announced that ChatGPT received a major upgrade to its memory features. The chatbot will now be able to remember a lot more about you, making it easier to personalize each conversation and adapt its responses. However, the feature won't be available to everyone, and there are a few things to note about the way memory will work now.

The company showed off the new update in a post on X (Twitter), giving a brief demo of how much ChatGPT can remember now. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT can now "reference all of your past chats to provide more personalized responses." Previously, only certain things were saved in memory, but now, ChatGPT can check out every single chat to reference what it knows about you in future conversations.