News Summary

Anthropic’s AI model Claude has experienced a significant increase in popularity following a recent conflict with the US military. Despite being blacklisted by the Pentagon due to ethical concerns, Claude climbed to the top of Apple’s chart of free apps in the US, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The app also gained traction in the UK, although it did not surpass ChatGPT there. The surge in demand led to outages for Anthropic, with over 1,400 users reporting disruptions. The company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has opposed the Pentagon’s use of their technology for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, citing ethical concerns. This stance led to the US government switching to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, despite similar use restrictions. Anthropic reported record sign-up numbers, with a substantial rise in both free and paid users, and has made it easy for users to switch to Claude through its memory feature.