Claude's voice mode just got smarter

Since last year, Anthropic has offered a voice mode through Claude, allowing you to speak to its chatbot instead of writing out your prompts. If I had to guess, most people probably don't know Claude has voice input. However, for those that have used it, the consensus has been that it could use work. One issue is that before today Anthropic routed voice mode queries through Haiku, its smallest model, to reduce latency. That meant voice mode worked well enough for simple questions, but could struggle with more complicated requests. Today, Anthropic is releasing an update to address that complaint.

Now when you use voice mode, it can turn to the company's Sonnet and Opus models for help. Provided you pay for Claude access, the tool will default to the last system you used for text chat. You can also switch between Haiku, Sonnet or Opus mid-conversation through the model picker. "Voice mode uses the fastest version of whichever model you've selected, so the conversation runs smoothly," Anthropic notes. Additionally, voice mode can now pull context from connected apps such as Gmail and Slack, as long as you grant Claude permission to do so.

An Anthropic spokesperson told Engadget voice mode uses a turn-based architecture, so all interactions will see Claude listen to you, pause to think and then respond. It's not fully duplex like OpenAI's new GPT-Live system, which can simultaneously process speech and generate an output. In practice, that should make talking to Claude feel less natural than ChatGPT. Another limitation of Claude's voice mode is that it can't automatically detect the language you're speaking in if you decide to switch languages mid-conversation. You need to either tell it out loud you're about to switch or select the language you're about to speak in from the voice settings menu. However, Anthropic has added support for additional languages, including Indonesian.

"This release is focused on intelligence and tool access," Anthropic told Engadget. "We're continuing to invest in voice and we'll have more to share later this year."

Anthropic is rolling out the new voice mode in beta to all users across its desktop and mobile apps, as well as web client. If you're using Claude through a free account, Anthropic will limit you to a single connection and your prompts will all go through Haiku, though you can speak to Claude in all of the languages voice mode now supports.