Shots Fired? Anthropic Brings Free Features On Claude After ChatGPT Ads Rollout

The competition between AI chatbots is getting more intense. Dario Amodei' Anthropic has announced that it is bringing some popular Claude features to users without subscription. The move comes just days after Sam Altman's OpenAI confirmed that it has started rolling out ads for some ChatGPT users on free and basic plans.Anthropic said that people using Claude for free can now create files, use connectors and access skills tools that were earlier limited to paid plans. The company shared the update on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X (previously called Twitter)."We're bringing some of Claude’s most-used features to the free plan. File creation, connectors, and skills are all now available without a subscription. Compaction is also now on the free plan. Claude summarizes

earlier context automatically, so long conversations can continue without starting over," Claude wrote on the social media platform. With the update, free users can now create and edit files directly inside a Claude chat. The chatbot will generate Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and PDFs within the conversation. It is important to know that these features run on Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.5 model for free users, while paid subscribers continue to get access to the more advanced Opus model.Another major addition is connectors. Free users can now connect Claude with several third-party apps and services at no cost. Supported platforms include Slack, Asana, Zapier, Stripe, Canva, Notion, Figma and WordPress. This means users can pull in information or work across apps without leaving the chat window.The OpenAI rival has also expanded access to 'skills'. These are reusable tools that give Claude specialised knowledge for tasks like creating presentations, spreadsheets, documents and PDFs. Users and organisations can also build their own custom skills based on their workflows and domain expertise.The AI start up has introduced 'compaction' for free users as well. This feature allows Claude to automatically summarise earlier parts of a conversation so that chats can continue for longer without restarting. However, Anthropic has not increased the usage limits for the free tierThe timing of this announcement is important as OpenAI recently said it would begin showing ads to some ChatGPT users on free and basic plans. On the other side, Anthropic wants to keep Claude ad-free."We’re starting to roll out a test for ads in ChatGPT today to a subset of free and Go users in the U.S. Ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers. Ads are labeled as sponsored and visually separate from the response. Our goal is to give everyone access to ChatGPT for free with fewer limits, while protecting the trust they place in it for important and personal tasks," OpenAI wrote on X.The Microsoft-backed startup had said that the goal is to keep ChatGPT available to more people for free or at a low cost while continuing to invest in faster responses and better AI features. Running large AI systems requires massive infrastructure and advertising is being tested as one way to support those costs.During the test phase, ads may appear based on the topic of your conversation and your past interactions with ChatGPT. For example, someone searching for recipes could see ads for grocery delivery or meal kits.