Anthropy is updating the Claude Sound Mode with more capable models

Weeks after OpenAI rolled out a new family of conversational models and updated ChatGPT’s voice mode, rival Anthropic is making moves to make Claude more voice-friendly with a new update. Users can choose between Opus, Sonnet and Haiku models, the company said Thursday.

Claude’s voice mode, released last year and powered by the Haiku model, provided quick responses, but wasn’t well suited to complex work. The company said that with the new update, voice mode chooses the model that people last used in text chat and uses its fastest version by default.

Anthropic said the new voice mode can help users have longer conversations, including providing feedback on their communication style, talking through a presentation to a customer, and exchanging ideas about product market research.

Furthermore, Cloud’s voice mode can leverage other apps like Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, Canva, and Notion. This means users can ask it to update a meeting slot, draft an email, or create a document in Notion.

Notably, this represents a significant difference from OpenAI’s voice mode, which has updated its conversational style but still isn’t able to use different tools to get work done.

Earlier this year, Anthropic added multilingual support to Claude’s voice mode in beta. Users can now speak different languages, but they have to manually select the language, she said. Currently, Anthropic supports English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Spanish (Latin America/Spain).

The new voice mode is available to all users in the cross-platform beta. However, free users will be restricted to using the Haiku model with only one connected app.

Anthropic has not made any changes to the audio model with this release, nor has it detailed the type of audio stack it uses. This means, unlike the OpenAI version, users may not find any improvements to conversation such as better handling of interruptions.