The Google-backed developer of artificial intelligence solutions Anthropic is reportedly making its models accessible to a handful of startups in the space as more and more competitors to ChatGPT keep making it to the surface.
Robin, a UK-based legal tech startup, seems to be among the first to give Anthropic’s AI models a try for commercial purposes according to TechCrunch. The AI-powered tool created by Robin can be used to create and edit contracts based on the feedback provided by all the parties involved.
Even though Robin did not provide many details about how it is collaborating with Anthropic to make this product possible, its Chief Executive Officer, Richard Robinson, told the tech-focused online magazine that they appreciated the AI company’s focus on safety as that lines up appropriately with Robin’s mission of creating a software-as-a-service product for the legal industry.
Anthropic Does Not Appear to be a Commercial Enterprise
Currently, Anthropic does not advertise any kind of subscription package and has mostly used its AI models for research purposes. However, running these models is quite expensive due to the elevated computing power required to perform the high number of operations they need to function.
Therefore, it is highly likely that the firm is hand-picking some businesses with which they can partner to monetize their solution. In December last year, the company provided access to the beta version of its “Claude” generative AI model to a larger number of developers. Those who wanted to give the software a try could apply by using a simple form.
Also read: Best Free AI Content Generator : Top 10 for February 2023
“This is an experiment in broadening access beyond a small set of Anthropic employees, collaborators, and crowdworkers. Our hope is to collectively explore some of the failure modes of our systems and share the resulting data back to the community”, Anthropic commented in a tweet back then.
However, the experiment was time-constrained as Anthropic only let developers test the beta version of Claude for a couple of weeks before shutting it down to analyze the data from the interactions that they had with the artificial intelligence model.
Another commercial endeavor that is also using the model created by Anthropic is Quora, as its new AI-powered chatbot Poe, which was launched earlier this month, has included Claude among the many models that users can rely on to get their questions answered. However, Quora does not charge a fee for using its generative AI hub – at least not yet.
What is Anthropic?
Anthropic was founded by a group of former OpenAI employees and it is led by Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela. The company is based in San Francisco and it has reportedly hired a team of over 40 tech professionals to run its research and commercial operations.
Anthropic has raised a substantial amount of capital from investors since its creation. In April last year, the company harnessed $580 million during its Series B funding round. This huge financing milestone was preceded by another $124 million capital injection that came from the demised founder of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried and other high-flying public figures from the tech space.
Meanwhile, the company recently announced that it had picked Google as its preferred provider of cloud services. No wonder why as Google committed $300 million to the firm to buy a 10% stake in Anthropic.
If this playbook seems familiar, it is because it resembles what Microsoft (MSFT) did with OpenAI – the company behind what is perhaps the most popular AI model to date, ChatGPT. Initially, the Redmond-based tech firm partnered with OpenAI to become its exclusive provider of cloud services and invested $1 billion in the firm.
However, Microsoft has now acquired a 49% stake in the California-based AI company founded by Sam Altman and others and it is reportedly entitled to receive up to 75% of the firm’s profits until its investment is fully repaid.
This collaboration enabled Microsoft to launch an AI-powered version of its flagship search engine Bing – a move that prompted Google to hastily release a similar product called Bard. Even though both of them have demonstrated multiple flaws during the testing phase, it seems that interest in AI models just keeps on growing.
Other Related Articles: