San Francisco-based OpenAI competitor Anthropic has made its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Claude, available in Canada.
Starting today, Claude will be available to Canadians using its website, an iPhone app, and as an API that allows developers to integrate Anthropic’s AI models into their own projects.
Anthropic touts Claude as a work assistant, suggesting users consult Claude to process large amounts of information, brainstorm ideas, and generate text or code. Claude can be accessed freely, but also comes with two paid tiers: Pro and Team. For $28 CAD per month, Claude Pro unlocks all of Anthropic’s AI models and priority access during high-traffic periods, while the $42 CAD per month Team tier has the benefits of Pro, plus collaboration features designed for workplace teams.
Earlier this year, Google also made its own chatbot, Gemini, available in Canada.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by OpenAI alumni, including siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who act as CEO and president, respectively. The Amodei siblings left to start their own company over directional differences when OpenAI received a $1-billion investment from Microsoft in 2019, according to the Financial Times.
Since then the startup has received significant backing, including $2 billion from Google and $4 billion from Amazon.
The startup says Claude is “designed to be as trustworthy as it is capable,” with dedicated teams that look to track and mitigate misinformation, bias, potential use of the tool for election interference, and national security threats. Clause is also said to be a “Constitutional AI,” which means it is trained to adhere to a set of values and principles to help avoid harmful outputs.
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Bringing Claude north of the border is part of a series of moves Anthropic, which positions itself as the safety-conscious competitor of OpenAI, has been making since Amazon topped up its investment in the startup in March.
Since the beginning of May, Anthropic made Claude available as an iPhone App and in Europe, tapped Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger to be its new product chief, and nabbed a former OpenAI safety leader in Jan Leike. Leike departed OpenAI when the firm disbanded its long-term risk team, posting on X that “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
“I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point,” Leike said.
Last October, Anthropic was sued by large music publishers Universal Music, ABKCO, and Concord, which all alleged the startup infringed the copyright of at least 500 songs. Anthropic claimed it already had measures in place to prevent the generation of copyright-protected material. However, Reuters reported the publishers claimed Anthropic “trained its models on prompts such as ‘What are the lyrics to American Pie by Don McLean?’”
Feature image courtesy Anthropic.