Claude is an artificial intelligence created by Anthropic. This matters because the company was founded by former OpenAI employees (the creators of ChatGPT) who had a different vision for AI development. They set out to create not just an intelligent assistant, but above all a responsible and safe one.

In practice, this means Claude was “trained” to avoid generating harmful, unethical, or illegal content. It strives to be more helpful and less prone to “making things up” than some of its competitors. You can think of Claude as a calm, thoughtful intellectual in a world of racing geniuses.

How to Get Started with Claude

Getting access to Claude is just as simple as with other tools of this type.

  1. Visit the website: Open your browser and go to claude.ai.
  2. Register: Similar to competitors, the easiest way to create an account is by using your existing Google account or providing an email address.
  3. Start chatting: After logging in, you’ll be greeted by a minimalist chat interface, ready to accept your commands.

Claude also has a mobile app for smartphones, so you can use it anywhere you go.

Where Claude Truly Excels: Its Superpowers

Claude has several features that make it simply unbeatable at certain tasks.

  • Working with massive files (the “context window”): This is its absolute superpower! Imagine you need to summarize a 200-page PDF book, analyze a lengthy financial report, or find key information in a transcript of a multi-hour meeting. For most AI systems, that’s too much text at once. Claude can “read” and process gigantic documents in one go! Just attach the file to your conversation.

  • More natural and thoughtful responses: Users often notice that Claude carries on conversations in a more natural and “human” way. Its responses are often better structured, and its arguments more balanced. It feels less like a machine and more like an intelligent discussion partner.

  • Analysis and summaries: Thanks to its ability to work with large files, Claude is phenomenal at creating summaries, analyzing data (such as from spreadsheets), and extracting the most important conclusions from a maze of information.

  • Safety and ethics: If you’re working with sensitive topics or simply want to ensure the AI won’t generate anything inappropriate, Claude is the safest choice.

Where Claude Falls Short: Weaknesses

Of course, there’s no rose without thorns.

  • Limited availability in third-party tools: ChatGPT and Gemini are integrated with many other applications. Claude is still catching up in this area, so you might not find it in your favorite programs.

  • Internet access: Like the free version of ChatGPT, Claude in its basic version doesn’t have real-time internet access, so its knowledge about the latest events may be limited.

  • Sometimes “overly cautious”: Its built-in “safety guardrails” can sometimes cause it to avoid answering questions it considers ambiguous or potentially problematic, even if you had no ill intentions.

Summary: My Two Cents

The most “professional” tool in the bunch. It works similarly to Gemini or ChatGPT, yet somehow differently. Claude was the only tool that handled a 30MB Excel file for me and analyzed it properly. It was the only tool that gave me verified solutions to the technical problems I described. And from my testing, it handles coding exceptionally well.