Claude 4 just got a massively useful upgrade — and it puts ChatGPT and Gemini on notice
Anthropic isn't holding back. The creators of the Claude AI chatbot have released a string of big updates recently, most notably the 4th version of their software, and they are showing no signs of slowing down with the news of a voice mode and web search now being added to the list.
Voice mode is a feature that has been seen rolling out across all of the big AI systems. ChatGPT and Gemini have both been pushing the feature heavily in recent months, especially with Gemini's integration on Android devices.
This technology lets you have a more fluid conversation with a chatbot. Instead of having to type your prompts and messages, you can chat to it, discussing your requests back and forth.
For Claude, this will first be available in beta testing for all mobile users over the next couple of weeks. Voice mode will automatically use Claude Sonnet 4 as its model of choice and will only be available in English, at least for now.
However, Anthropic has reported that it will be available across all plans and apps on both Android and iOS.
It will also have five different voice options, all with somewhat bizarre names: Buttery, Airy, Mellow, Glassy, and Rounded.
During the voice chat, you can switch between modes, going back and forth between voice and text and, like its competitors, Claude will be able to discuss documents, images and complex information by voice. This allows you to upload files or take photos as you speak or even film your surroundings.
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While this is available on all plans, those on Pro plans or anything higher will also get access to a feature called knowledge integration. This gives Claude access to your emails, calendars, documents, and web searches to give the voice assistant more to work with.
Along with the introduction of voice mode, Anthropic has also revealed that web search is now available on all plans. This was previously a paid for feature, giving Claude the ability to search the web to answer requests.
This gives access to breaking news, current market trends and any real-time data Claude can pull from the internet.
Like the voice mode, this is a feature becoming increasingly popular, already seen on Google Gemini, ChatGPT and some of Claude's other big competitors.
Just last week, Anthropic revealed Claude 4 — the latest version of its AI technology. This brought Claude back into the running, even putting it up against Gemini 2.5 Pro, an also recently released model that has been at the top of the leaderboards for testing.
This update brought new abilities for Claude to write and edit code, and allows Claude to think more carefully through prompts, similar to the deep research move we're seeing across the board in AI right now.
The release included two new models: Claude 4 Opus and Claude 4 Sonnet. When we put this latest version up against Gemini 2.5 Pro in testing, while it was close, Claude did secure the win.
However, while Claude seems to be on top right now, with the speed the AI world moves at the title could soon go to someone else.
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