The AI model Claude has seen a remarkable rise in popularity, particularly following its recent blacklisting by the Pentagon due to ethical concerns.
On Saturday, Claude ascended to the top of Apple’s free app rankings in the U.S., knocking OpenAI’s ChatGPT down a peg, just one day after the Pentagon enlisted OpenAI to provide AI capabilities for classified military networks. While Claude made significant strides on iPhone charts in the UK, it did not surpass ChatGPT. The app also gained traction on Android platforms in both the U.S. and UK, although ChatGPT continued to hold the lead, as reported by Sensor Tower.
However, on Monday, Claude and other applications from Anthropic experienced outages, attributed to an "unprecedented demand for Claude" in the preceding week. Downdetector, a site that tracks service interruptions, noted that over 1,400 users reported issues shortly after 6 am ET, but by 11 am ET, Anthropic announced that the problems had been resolved.
Despite the tensions with the Pentagon, Anthropic has enjoyed substantial growth. The company noted that every day of the previous week set new records for sign-ups to Claude.
Tensions escalated when Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, labeled Anthropic a potential supply-chain risk after CEO Dario Amodei stood firm on ethical standards regarding the use of his technology for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Amodei argued that current AI models aren't dependable enough for weaponry and that mass surveillance infringes on constitutional rights. Furthermore, he contested the federal government's authority to designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk and assured clients and Pentagon contractors that their operations remain unaffected.
The federal government is accusing Anthropic of overstepping its bounds, with Donald Trump commenting on Truth Social: “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Pentagon, forcing them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution.” The Trump administration subsequently chose OpenAI’s ChatGPT for the task.
On Friday, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, revealed that his company finalized a deal with the federal government shortly after negotiations between the Pentagon and Anthropic collapsed. He assured that the military would not employ ChatGPT for autonomous lethal systems or mass surveillance. However, this reassurance has been met with skepticism from various AI professionals, legal experts, and tech enthusiasts, who question why the U.S. government would shift its allegiance from Anthropic to OpenAI when both have similar safeguards in place. Notably, some ChatGPT users, including pop star Katy Perry, took to social media to announce their switch to Claude, encouraging others to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions.
Anthropic commenced the year strongly, with a more than 60% rise in free active users and a quadrupling of daily sign-ups. The number of paid subscribers to Claude also more than doubled.
To facilitate the transition for new users, Anthropic has implemented a memory feature available across all paid plans. The company promotes this feature by stating, “With one copy-paste, Claude updates its memory and picks up right where you left off.” This approach allows users’ initial conversations to feel as familiar as their hundredth. Additionally, Anthropic offers a step-by-step guide for those wishing to migrate from other platforms to Claude.