In its first week of public beta, Anthropic’s “Computer Use” feature is gaining immediate traction, helping people do research and complete coding tasks. Claude works autonomously in Computer Use mode, suggesting broad implications for future productivity and workforce goals. Coming on the heels of OpenAI’s Swarm framework, these early forays into independent AI assistants seem to indicate that implementing such systems will be an area of focus for businesses in 2025. Claude can “see” what’s onscreen and use its “judgment” to adapt to different tasks, segueing across workflows and software.

“Developers can direct Claude to use computers the way people do — by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text,” Anthropic notes in a news post.

The feature is initially being made available via Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which Anthropic says is the first frontier AI model to offer such functionality. It is accessible via the Anthropic API (with detailed installation instructions).

“At this stage, it is still experimental — at times cumbersome and error-prone,” Anthropic shares candidly, qualifying that it is seeking early developer feedback and expects the capability to “improve rapidly over time.”

But early users seem impressed. VentureBeat quotes one enthusiast embracing the idea that “you can now build your own personal army of AIs that will do work for you,” calling it “the most amazing AI technology I’ve ever used.” Another says “people can’t stop getting creative with it,” providing 10 examples.

Asked to research “trending AI news stories and provide a rundown,” Claude “opened a browser, moved the cursor to the URL bar, typed in ‘Reuters,’ navigated to the AI section, and then repeated that process for The Verge and TechCrunch. The model then offered up six trending news stories,” VentureBeat writes, comparing it to having a “free research employee” that reasons with itself.

AI agents “are built for productivity and to complete multistep, complex tasks on a user’s behalf,” CNBC informs, adding that “they’re typically designed for specific business functions and can be customized on large AI models.”

Aside from OpenAI’s Swarm buzz this month, and now Anthropic, no other AI companies are currently making news with turnkey agent installations that are widely available. Microsoft recently widened its Copilot Studio AI agent preview, while Google is reportedly working on something called Jarvis.

CNBC — which describes Anthropic as the “Amazon-backed AI startup founded by former OpenAI research executives” — provides a rundown on who’s doing what with agenting and the Claude Enterprise and Teams plans.

TechRadar reports on other Claude updates, such as the ability to write and run JavaScript and a new analytics tool.