OpenAI recently unveiled its latest flagship model, GPT-4o for its AI chatbot ChatGPT, adding new capabilities and extending its functionality. Now, one of its biggest rivals, Anthropic, has also announced some updates to Claude, its AI model. Like ChatGPT, Claude AI has conversational capabilities and can help you perform a variety of tasks, like generating text content, writing code, summarizing texts, and more.

The new update adds Tool Use to Claude, which lets it interact with various external APIs and tools. Users can now specify a toolset for the AI to use to perform various actions. This update will be available for Claude-3 and enables users to create chatbots for specific uses, similar to the AI agent Google recently showcased at its developer I/O event.

What is Anthropic's Tool Use?

Anthropic's Tool Use, also known as Function Calling, lets Claude-3 AI models interact with various data sources and APIs, helping extend their functionality. Users can define the set of tools they want Claude to use to perform certain tasks. Then, when a user asks a question, the AI model will check which of the available tools can help provide an answer.

If it requires an external tool, you will have to extract the tool name and input from Claude and run them, before returning the results to the AI model. Claude can then use that information to provide a response to the query. For instance, you can perform these series of steps to help Claude answer questions, like what is the weather like in a particular region or what is the recipe for a particular dish.

However, you cannot use Anthropic's AI agents directly like those from OpenAI and Google. For these chatbots, you will have to code the functionality for the tasks they have to perform. This means that Anthropic's AI agents may not be accessible to those without any coding skills or knowledge. That said, the new Tool Use feature of Claude-3 can be used for a wide variety of functions.

Anthropic's Tool Use Availability And Pricing

Claude-3's Tool Use is available through Google Vertex AI, Amazon Bedrock, and Anthropic's Messages API. The pricing will depend on the text pieces you process with the AI model and will be measured in tokens. 750 words will be equal to 1,000 tokens, and users can choose from different options.

The cheapest option, Haiku, costs 25 cents per million input tokens and 1.25 per million output tokens.

What Can You Do With Anthropic's Tool Use?

Like other AI agents, the ones you create using Anthropic's Tool Use can perform a wide variety of functions. They can answer queries on various subjects, offer personalized product recommendations, and even provide real-time tech support, depending on the purpose for which you create them.

You can create a chatbot specializing in one particular function by providing it with an external database for that function, ensuring maximum efficiency. Thus, this makes Anthropic's AI agents different from chatbots from most other companies. Most AI agents that have been showcased or are available can perform a wide variety of tasks but do not excel at any of them.

On the other hand, AI agents based on Claude-3 can be designed to specialize in specific tasks, allowing them to perform those tasks flawlessly. This makes them handy for several situations. For instance, you can create an AI agent to search for specific information in a huge database or access data quickly to respond to customer queries. Similarly, users can provide the chatbot with images of different outfits and ask it which one would look good on them.

Claude-3 can handle several simple tools and even a few complex ones too, allowing you to create agents for different purposes, such as the following:

  • You can use Tool Use to create an AI agent for collecting information like dates, names, amounts, etc. from documents like invoices quickly.
  • Anthropic's AI agents can be designed to convert natural language prompts into API calls, helping speed up actions like canceling subscriptions.
  • Users can get quick and accurate answers to questions through these agents, making them ideal for support purposes.
  • AI agents can help automate routine tasks like data entry by retrieving data from documents like invoices quickly.
  • Granular tasks, such as arranging a meeting, can be accomplished more efficiently by AI chatbots which can use information like attendee availability.

Anthropic is the latest company that has started offering AI agents, which users can create to accomplish specific tasks. With almost all major tech companies doing the same, it is clear that this is the direction AI models are heading in.

The company has also provided examples on its website showcasing various startups using Claude-3-based AI agents. If you want to start using them too, head to Anthropic's website and check out the documentation and tool use tutorial to get started.