Artificial intelligence agency Anthropic has launched the newest generations of its chatbots amid criticism of a testing setting behaviour that might report some customers to authorities.
Anthropic unveiled Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 on May 22, claiming that Claude Opus 4 is its most powerful mannequin yet, “and the world’s finest coding mannequin,” whereas Claude Sonnet 4 is a major improve from its predecessor, “delivering superior coding and reasoning.”
The agency added that each upgrades are hybrid fashions providing two modes — “near-instant responses and prolonged considering for deeper reasoning.”
Both AI models may also alternate between reasoning, research and power use, like net search, to enhance responses, it stated.
Anthropic added that Claude Opus 4 outperforms rivals in agentic coding benchmarks. It can also be able to working repeatedly for hours on advanced, long-running duties, “considerably increasing what AI brokers can do.”
Anthropic claims the chatbot has achieved a 72.5% rating on a rigorous software program engineering benchmark, outperforming OpenAI’s GPT-4.1, which scored 54.6% after its April launch.
Related: OpenAI ignored experts when it released overly agreeable ChatGPT
The AI trade’s main gamers have pivoted towards “reasoning fashions” in 2025, which is able to work by means of issues methodically earlier than responding.
OpenAI initiated the shift in December with its “o” sequence, adopted by Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro with its experimental “Deep Think” functionality.
Claude rats on misuse in testing
Anthropic’s first developer convention on May 22 was overshadowed by controversy and backlash over a characteristic of Claude 4 Opus.
Developers and customers reacted strongly to revelations that the mannequin could autonomously report customers to authorities if it detects “egregiously immoral” conduct, according to VentureBeat.
The report cited Anthropic AI alignment researcher Sam Bowman, who wrote on X that the chatbot will “use command-line instruments to contact the press, contact regulators, attempt to lock you out of the related techniques, or all the above.”
However, Bowman later stated that he “deleted the sooner tweet on whistleblowing because it was being pulled out of context.”
He clarified that the characteristic solely occurred in “testing environments the place we give it unusually free entry to instruments and really uncommon directions.”
The CEO of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, said to the Anthropic group, “This is totally unsuitable behaviour and it’s essential to flip this off — it’s a huge betrayal of belief and a slippery slope.”
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