Anthropic unveils Claude Duet AI agent app (Oct 21)

(This corrects paragraph 1 of the October 21 story, changing “Thursday” to “Wednesday.”)

Oct. 21 (Reuters) - Anthropic announced Claude Duet on Wednesday. It is a separate AI agent app designed to help professionals and small-business owners by taking action on its own. The launch comes as rivals such as OpenAI and Meta race to build AI agents that can do work for users without needing them to guide every step.

• Duet gives users a daily summary and can handle tasks such as scheduling meetings, making financial forecasts and building web apps, Anthropic said.

• Duet is available on iOS, Android and claude.ai through a research preview that requires users to join a waitlist. It checks connected apps and points out things that need attention instead of waiting for users to tell it what to do.

• Duet uses Anthropic's Opus 5.5 model. At first, it is available to subscribers in the United States who have Pro or Max plans. It uses the same usage limits as their existing plans.

• Last month, OpenAI launched its always-on “dots” agents, which work toward users' goals across apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Meta's Muse AI agent received millions of downloads and increased investor interest in AI services that can act on their own.

• Duet connects to more than 6,000 tools and services through the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail and Slack. It can also make purchases using Stripe's Link digital wallet and Shopify's Shop Pay.

• Anthropic said Claude Duet asks users for approval before taking sensitive actions. However, the company acknowledged that the agent may not correctly judge how urgent something is and is still less effective at personal tasks, such as booking tickets.

(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)