(Credit: Anthropic)
Anthropic released a new AI reasoning model today called Claude 3.7 Sonnet, as well as an agentic AI coding tool called Claude Code.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet can manage two types of information processing at once, which is why Anthropic is calling it the "first hybrid reasoning model." It can either produce "near-instant responses" or engage in a drawn out, step-by-step train of thought that's visible to the user.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet is now available on all plans—including Free, Pro, Team, and Enterprise—as well as the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. But the extended thinking mode is not available on the free tier.
AI models that walk users through how they arrive at their answers is a big trend in chatbot land, and considered a key technological advancement. OpenAI released its version, GPT-o1, in September 2024. DeepSeek also has a "DeepThink" mode, as does Elon Musk's Grok 3 chatbot, which is how a user caught it censoring negative information about Musk and Trump.
Claude 3.7 Sonnet differentiates itself from DeepSeek and OpenAI by combining the two thinking types in one: "Just as humans use a single brain for both quick responses and deep reflection, we believe reasoning should be an integrated capability of frontier models rather than a separate model entirely," Anthropic says.
Users can pick if they want the model to answer quickly, or to think longer before answering. In extended thinking mode, the model "self-reflects before answering, which improves its performance on math, physics, instruction-following, coding, and many other tasks," Anthropic says.
This type of unified model experience, where users don't need to manually select different models for different tasks, is another AI chatbot trend. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company will eventually remove ChatGPT's "model picker."
"We want AI to 'just work' for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten," Altman says. "We hate the model picker as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence."
Developers who access Claude 3.7 Sonnet through Anthropic's API can also set a "budget" for how much computational effort the model uses to answer. "This allows you to trade off speed (and cost) for quality of answer," Anthropic says. The company made a point to say that Claude 3.7 Sonnet "has the same price as its predecessors," likely in an attempt to compete with DeepSeek, which grabbed headlines for offering high intelligence without an increase in computing cost.
Finally, Claude's latest release hits on perhaps the biggest trend in AI right now—agentic, or autonomous, functionality—with Claude Code. It's only available in a limited research preview for now, but promises to revolutionize coding by doing part of a developers' job for them.
Claude is known for its strong coding chops, and with Claude Code developers can "delegate substantial engineering tasks to Claude directly from their terminal." It acts as "an active collaborator that can search and read code, edit files, write and run tests, commit and push code to GitHub, and use command line tools—keeping you in the loop at every step."
Anthropic says these types of agentic capabilities are a step above the tech it debuted in 2024, and on the road to a world where Claude can "find breakthrough solutions" on its own in 2027.
About Our Expert
As a news and features writer at PCMag, I cover the biggest tech trends that shape the way we live and work. I specialize in on-the-ground reporting, uncovering stories from the people who are at the center of change—whether that’s the CEO of a high-valued startup or an everyday person taking on Big Tech. I also cover daily tech news and breaking stories, contextualizing them so you get the full picture.
I came to journalism from a previous career working in Big Tech on the West Coast. That experience gave me an up-close view of how software works and how business strategies shift over time. Now that I have my master's in journalism from Northwestern University, I couple my insider knowledge and reporting chops to help answer the big question: Where is this all going?
- Is Your Smartphone Ruining Your Life? These 6 People Switched to Flip Phones and Finally Found Peace
- An Underwater Internet Cable Mishap Sent an Entire Country Back to the 1880s. It Could Happen Anywhere
- Time Is Running Out to Get a Cut of Amazon's $2.5 Billion Prime Settlement
- Sorry, Big Tech: 73% of People Don't Care About Fancy Upgrades. Here's What They Really Want
- I Just Vibe Coded a Global Mass Surveillance Site in 2 Hours With OpenAI's Codex. It Was Terrifyingly Easy
- More from Emily Forlini
