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Anthropic's Claude chatbot 'isn't sentient, but it certainly feels sentient'

The most popular generative AI chatbots, based on user engagement with the tools, are OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Bing, Google's Gemini, Character.AI, Perplexity, Anthropic's Claude and Microsoft's CoPilot, according to the latest traffic data compiled by Similarweb.

The audience tapping into Claude is pretty small (20 million visitors compared with 1.6 billion to ChatGPT), but don't let the size of the user base fool you. That's the word from CNET AI chatbot reviewer Imad Khan, who gave Claude an 8 (out of 10) score in his evaluation.

"When Claude answers questions in contemplative ways and also goes out of its way to ask you follow-up questions and your opinions, it's hard not to be surprised by its supposed curiosity," Khan said. "Let's be clear: That curiosity isn't real. But when it asked me questions like, "What is your perspective?" I felt compelled to give it an honest answer. This type of reciprocal understanding is what humans do with one another."

That's why Khan called Claude the "most conversational of all the available free AI engines" and noted that it "gives direct answers that feel well thought-out."

Conversing with Claude can seem entirely human, with Claude passing the Turing test on steroids. But the AI’s existence is very different from our own, making it challenging to understand what Claude is and isn’t. While some aspects of its design (e.g., elements of neural network technology) are meant to mimic human processing, others are not. And its activity occurs on a substrate that is fundamentally different from a human brain.