CNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos reports on Anthropic's latest AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and OpenAI's new Instant Checkout feature that allows users to buy products through its artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.

The release of Open AI's ChatGPT has accelerated the development of artificial intelligence and warnings about its impact on society.

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Anthropic has launched its newest AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, which the company describes as a significant step toward more autonomous AI agents capable of operating independently. The model is reported to be one-fifth the price of Anthropic's previous release, reflecting internal efficiency improvements and broader industry trends toward cost reduction.

The announcement comes as competition intensifies in the AI sector, with companies like OpenAI and DeepSeek also introducing new features and price cuts. Industry benchmarks show Claude Sonnet 4.5 outperforming some competitors, though experts note that real-world performance can vary based on specific use cases. The sector is also seeing increased customization and attention to user experience, including new safety and parental control features.

Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

Hey Mike, So Anthropic is pitching its newest model as a meaningful step toward real-world AI agents, so systems that can operate independently and carry out tasks without constant human input. These autonomous assistants are the latest front in the AI model race, with OpenAI just this hour announcing that it's switching on instant checkout in-chat GBT so that users can buy directly in-chat from Etsy and soon from Shopify. The move that's powered by its own agent tech have sent shares of Etsy and Shopify higher. Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, now Anthropic's chief product officer, told me that this latest model is opening the door for businesses to build products that simply weren't possible a few months ago. We hear from companies all the time that their product or their idea was not possible three months ago, six months ago with the previous models, but then something happens where the model evolves to the point where all of a sudden it's now possible. The frontier is still moving and the gains are still significant. And the launch comes as the AI model race hits an inflection point. There's been this growing debate over whether innovation is slowing, with new releases feeling more incremental, less revelatory. Krieger pushed back on that, saying that rumors of a slowdown are greatly exaggerated. He also said their models are getting cheaper. This one is one-fifth the price of its model released last month. And speaking of price, that is where rivals like DeepSeek are pushing ahead. As part of a new model announcement this morning, the Chinese AI giant said that it's cutting the price of its software tools in half. Guys? Mackenzie, where does most of the cost savings come from? What is that driven by? Well, when we think about cost saving with DeepSeek, that's in the context of these open source models. That's why R1, that first release in January, was so crucial to resetting expectations on the race across players here in the US. But with respect to the price that we're seeing come down with Anthropic's model, this one-fifth the price of the Opus release last month, it really has to do with certain internal efficiencies. And so this is better at coding, and it's able to move faster. We also saw ChatGBT, the pricing in terms of enterprise, come significantly down as well when they had that release come out two months ago. They credited that with this routing system, where they don't always have to go to the highest powered model, but they can downgrade to a lower model that doesn't cost as much to run with some of the easier queries. And that's how they were able to achieve price efficiency here. Mac, I know that there are these kind of third-party metrics where they try to evaluate each of these models and try to grade their improvement and try to compare them. Is that really the standard at this point? I know some of these models are really more tailored or suited to different uses. So it seems as if there's a little bit of distinction going on in terms of what they're directed toward. It's an excellent point. So there's this SWE benchmark, and that's considered one of the industry standards here. And on that, you've got Anthropic's latest model outperforming ChatGBT 5. But what's so key is that I've spoken to a lot of coders here, especially from the wrapper companies, so a Windsurf or a Cursor. And the thought process is it's possible to game these benchmarking tests. You know what they need in order to hit certain landmarks. And to your point, Mike, there are such customized use cases. So whereas Anthropic really resonates with an insurance company, for example, AIG or some of those other names, there are others like Agrok that's better with social media. So they are very highly customized use cases when you think about where these LLMs best perform. And then there's another piece of it, which I've just picked up from people talking about them, almost the personality, so to speak, of each one and how they interact with your queries. Maybe it's just taste, maybe it's just kind of style points, but just this idea of just how cloying or how confrontational the models might be. Well, that's been something that OpenAI has been confronting this summer in the face of ongoing litigation. And so what they've done just this morning, actually, is announced new age-gating parameters, so basically introducing these parental controls where the experience for a user, if they are a minor, will be significantly different than a general user. But separate to that, any age group will notice that with ChatGBT5, what's so different here is less sycophancy. So that's where you're really looking to make this, I mean, they've consulted with dozens of psychologists around the world in order to better customize their answers to pander less to what users want to hear. And that's why some people, when they were talking about their reception to ChatGBT5 being strained, it was the fact that they felt like they lost their friend because they were looking, that was a direct change in the coding. It's remarkable. Great stuff, Mac. Thanks very much.

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Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its latest AI model

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