Anthropic’s Claude gets new web search feature with direct links to sources | Technology News

Anthropic’s Claude can now search the web, bringing the AI-powered chatbot in line with its rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Mral’s Le Chat.
The web search feature is currently only available for paid Claude users in the US with a free tier and expansion to additional countries coming soon, Anthropic said in a blog post published on March 20.
In order to automatically receive real-time search results for queries, users will need to enable the web search function within profile settings on the Claude web app. The new feature is powered Anthropic’s latest AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
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A few programmers have pointed out that Claude’s web search feature relies on the search index maintained browser developer Brave, according to a report TechCrunch. Brave’s search index also forms the basis of the search feature offered on Mral’s chatbot platform Le Chat, with an additional API for providing search results related to current events.
“When Claude incorporates information from the web into its responses, it provides direct citations so you can easily fact-check sources,” the company said.
“Instead of finding search results yourself, Claude processes and delivers relevant sources in a conversational format. This enhancement expands Claude’s extensive knowledge base with real-time insights, providing answers based on more current information,” it added.

As AI search tools rapidly gain popularity, studies show that chatbots pose the risk of hallucination or mis-citing web sources. According to a report the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, ChatGPT and Gemini provided wrong answers to over 60 per cent of questions.Story continues below this ad
In addition, The Guardian reported that ChatGPT Search can be tricked into generating misleading summaries of search results.
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