SAN FRANCISCO, May 22 (Xinhua) -- U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) startup company Anthropic on Thursday introduced the next generation of models Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 during its inaugural developer conference.
According to the San Francisco-headquartered company, Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4 are hybrid models offering two modes: near-instant responses and extended thinking for deeper reasoning. The models set "new standards for coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents."
Claude Opus 4 is described as the world's best coding model, offering sustained performance on complex, long-duration tasks and agent-based workflows. It outperforms all previous models on memory capabilities, Anthropic said.
Claude Sonnet 4 is a significant upgrade to Claude Sonnet 3.7, delivering superior coding and reasoning while responding more precisely to instructions. The model strikes a balance between performance and efficiency across both internal and external use cases, with enhanced steerability for greater control over implementations, delivering an optimal mix of capability and practicality, the company added.
Both models can use tools -- like web search -- during extended thinking, allowing Claude to alternate between reasoning and tool use to improve responses.
They can also use tools in parallel, follow instructions more precisely, and demonstrate significantly improved memory capabilities, extracting and retaining key facts to ensure continuity when granted access to local files by developers, the company said.
The Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise Claude plans include both models and extended thinking, with Sonnet 4 also available to free users. Both models are available on the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud's Vertex AI, according to the company. ■
