Anthropic Enhances Claude AI with Extended Research Capabilities and App Integrations

Claude's AI research mode now runs for up to 45 minutes before delivering reports

On Thursday, Anthropic announced significant upgrades to its AI assistant Claude, extending its research capabilities to run for up to 45 minutes before delivering comprehensive reports. The company also expanded its integration options, allowing Claude to connect with popular third-party services. Much like Google's Deep Research (which debuted on December 11) and ChatGPT's deep research features (February 2), Anthropic first announced its own "Research" feature on April 15. Each can autonomously browse the web and other online sources to compile research reports in document format, and open source clones of the technique have debuted as well. Now, Anthropic is taking its Research feature a step further. The upgraded mode enables Claude to conduct "deeper" investigations across "hundreds of internal and external sources," Anthropic says. When users toggle the Research button, Claude breaks down complex requests into smaller components, examines each one, and compiles a report with citations linking to original sources. In our experience, most of these deep research features from the various AI vendors have worked fairly well, surfacing relevant research that can be difficult to find otherwise if you don't already know where to look. But users should be aware of the potential for confabulations within the results that might contain plausible-sounding AI-invented sources that don't exist. A simple test While most reports complete within 5 to 15 minutes, Anthropic says, the new research system can now take up to 45 minutes for particularly complex investigations -- tasks that would typically require hours of manual research effort. We can testify that AI-prepared research documents can definitely save some time gathering important and noteworthy sources. But you have to know what you're looking at to make sure you're not relying on irrelevant or false information. As always with AI outputs, do not trust any of them blindly. In this sense, AI search functions have arguably been most useful so far for experts in a particular field who can separate the wheat from the chaff. For example, we asked Anthropic's Research a simple question: "Who Invented Video Games?" After 13 minutes and 2 seconds of research, it constructed a fairly comprehensive and nuanced report, complete with sources, that, in my opinion (having written a lot about the subject over the past 20 years), provides a largely accurate historical overview that exceeds the quality of most video game history books in print today. Still, the report contained a direct quote statement from William Higinbotham that appears to combine quotes from two sources not cited in the source list. (One must always be careful with confabulated quotes in AI because even outside of this Research mode, Claude 3.7 Sonnet tends to invent plausible ones to fit a narrative.) We recently covered a study that showed AI search services confabulate sources frequently, and in this case, it appears that the sources Claude Research surfaced, while real, did not always match what is stated in the report. There's always room for interpretation and variation in detail, of course, but overall, Claude Research did a relatively good job crafting a report on this particular topic. Still, you'd want to dig more deeply into each source and confirm everything if you used it as the basis for serious research. You can read the full Claude-generated result as this text file, saved in markdown format. Sadly, the markdown version does not include the source URLS found in the Claude web interface. Integrations feature Anthropic also announced Thursday that it has broadened Claude's data access capabilities. In addition to web search and Google Workspace integration, Claude can now search any connected application through the company's new "Integrations" feature. The feature reminds us somewhat of OpenAI's ChatGPT Plugins feature from March 2023 that aimed for similar connections, although the two features work differently under the hood. These Integrations allow Claude to work with remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers across web and desktop applications. The MCP standard, which Anthropic introduced last November and we covered in April, connects AI applications to external tools and data sources. At launch, Claude supports Integrations with ten services, including Atlassian's Jira and Confluence, Zapier, Cloudflare, Intercom, Asana, Square, Sentry, PayPal, Linear, and Plaid. The company plans to add more partners like Stripe and GitLab in the future. Each integration aims to expand Claude's functionality in specific ways. The Zapier integration, for instance, reportedly connects thousands of apps through pre-built automation sequences, allowing Claude to automatically pull sales data from HubSpot or prepare meeting briefs based on calendar entries. With Atlassian's tools, Anthropic says that Claude can collaborate on product development, manage tasks, and create multiple Confluence pages and Jira work items simultaneously. Anthropic has made its advanced Research and Integrations features available in beta for users on Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, with Pro plan access coming soon. The company has also expanded its web search feature (introduced in March) to all Claude users on paid plans globally.

Anthropic lets users connect more apps to Claude | TechCrunch

Anthropic on Thursday launched a new way to connect apps and tools to its AI chatbot Claude, as well as an expanded "deep research" capability that allows Claude to search the web, enterprise accounts, and more. The new app connection feature, called Integrations, and expanded deep research tool, dubbed Advanced Research, are available in beta for subscribers to Anthropic's Claude Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, and soon Pro. In unrelated news, Anthropic is also upping rate limits for its AI-powered coding tool, Claude Code, for users who subscribe to its $200-per-month Max Plan. They're both a part of Anthropic's effort to keep pace with competing chatbots like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Anthropic reportedly hopes to reach $34.5 billion in revenue in 2027, and while it's certainly making inroads, it has a long way to go. Anthropic's annualized revenue was around $1.4 billion in early March, according to one report. Integrations builds on the company's MCP protocol, which lets models draw data from sources like business tools and software to complete tasks, as well as from content repositories and app development environments. Integrations taps MCP to allow developers to build and host app servers that enhance Claude's capabilities, and let users discover and connect these servers to Claude. "When you connect your tools to Claude, it gains deep context about your work -- understanding project histories, task statuses, and organizational knowledge -- and can take actions across every surface," wrote Anthropic in a blog post. To start, there are a number of Integrations from Anthropic partners including Atlassian, Zapier, Cloudflare, Intercom, Square, and PayPal. Each expands what Claude can do. For example, the Atlassian Integration lets Claude summarize and create pages in Atlassian's Confluence workplace collaboration software, while the Zappier Integration allows Claude to connect to the former's app automation workflows. As for the other new Claude feature launching today, Anthropic's Advanced Research, it allows Claude to crawl "hundreds" of internal and external sources to deliver what Anthropic describes as "more comprehensive" reports on a topic in anywhere from five to 45 minutes. Advanced Research can take advantage of Claude's newly expanded connectors, Anthropic says, searching across Integrations and -- when using the Claude Desktop app on macOS or Window -- MCP-connected local systems. "With its new ability to do more complex research, available when you toggle on the Research button, Claude breaks down your request into smaller parts, investigating each deeply before compiling a comprehensive report," wrote Anthropic. "When Claude incorporates information from sources, it provides clear citations that link directly to the original material." There's been a raft of deep research tools launched recently across chatbots such as Gemini, Microsoft's Copilot, and xAI's Grok. Driving them are reasoning AI models, which possess the ability to think through problems and fact-check themselves -- skills arguably important for conducting in-depth research on a subject. Anthropic's Research tool previously was among the faster tools in this category, taking around a minute to compile reports. But the results tended to be shallower, in part because it didn't use an AI "reasoning" model capable of taking more time to work through problems step by step.

Claude's Research Feature Can Now Spend 45 Minutes Looking for Answers

Anthropic's Claude generative AI model can now spend more time searching for answers to your queries -- if you pay for the right plan. Claude can also integrate with other apps, including PayPal, Cloudflare, Jira and Confluence, with more expected soon, Anthropic announced in a blog post on May 1. Anthropic also expanded the ability to access web search to include all paid plans. This year, the AI industry has been in a race for new and more useful features, and research is a big part of it. Google's Gemini has a tool called Deep Research that is available to all users for free. OpenAI's ChatGPT Deep Research mode is available to anyone with a paid plan. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) These deeper research tools can search the web and pull together more complete answers to your queries. The AI models will often cite the source of information, although you should still verify it because of the risk of errors known as hallucinations. Regardless of what AI tool you use, "the thing about this is you've got to check the sources. It'll make up the sources too," Alex Mahadevan, director of the MediaWise media literacy program at the Poynter Institute, told me. Anthropic said its improved research function can spend five to 45 minutes finding and reviewing sources. Those sources can come from internal sources -- like your own documents or apps you've connected -- or from external sources it finds on the internet. The model breaks requests down into smaller parts and handles each separately, then compiles a full report. The advanced research function is available in beta on Anthropic's Max, Team and Enterprise plans. The Max plan starts at $100 per month. Anthropic said it will soon be available on the more affordable Pro plan, which costs as little as $17 per month, depending on how you pay.

Claude can now talk to your favorite apps

Anthropic has launched a new Integrations feature and expanded its Advanced Research tool for its AI chatbot Claude, available in beta for subscribers to its Claude Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, with Pro users to follow soon. The Integrations feature allows users to connect apps and tools to Claude, leveraging Anthropic's MCP protocol to draw data from various sources and enhance the chatbot's capabilities. Developers can create and host app servers that integrate with Claude, enabling users to discover and connect these servers to the chatbot. Initial integrations include partnerships with Atlassian, Zapier, Cloudflare, Intercom, Square, and PayPal, expanding Claude's functionality. For instance, the Atlassian Integration allows Claude to summarize and create pages in Confluence, while the Zapier Integration connects Claude to app automation workflows. Advanced Research enables Claude to search "hundreds" of internal and external sources, delivering comprehensive reports on a topic within 5-45 minutes. It can utilize Claude's expanded connectors and search across Integrations, as well as MCP-connected local drives when using the Claude Desktop app. Claude breaks down research requests into smaller parts, investigates each deeply, and compiles a comprehensive report with clear citations linking to the original material. Anthropic has also increased rate limits for its Claude Code tool for Max customers. The company's annualized revenue was around $1.4 billion in early March, with a reported goal of reaching $34.5 billion in revenue by 2027.