Anthropic has opened access to Google Chrome browser extension version of its Claude AI Assistant for Claude Pro, Team and Enterprise subscribers after months of testing with the highest tier Max subscribers. Claude in Chrome is actively working on web navigation, performing tabbed tasks, and even taking on coding duties rather than just summarizing websites.
The idea is to place Claude in places he couldn't reach before. Instead of asking AI to explain what you see, Claude can now see it too, interpret it, and interact with live web pages. I tried the new version of Claude. I activated the extension and agreed to give the AI access to almost everything I do online.
In Chrome, you can assign many tasks to Claude. I made an appointment, briefly describing when, where and with whom I wanted to meet. The AI scanned my Google Calendar and suggested free time to my guests in a draft email.
I also took a page from Anthropic's demos to see how well the AI did at organizing my incredibly scattered Google Drive. After granting him access to the platform, I asked him to review and organize hundreds of documents and spreadsheets into folders with related documents. The AI did just that, setting aside anything I wasn't sure about so I could assign them correctly. I went from nearly 900 disparate documents and spreadsheets to the top six folders with several subfolders and eliminated almost 50 duplicates.
Work process training
Perhaps the most intriguing and powerful feature Claude offers in Chrome is workflow recording, which allows you to train the AI to do things on your behalf. You press the record button, go about your business as usual, and Claude watches and remembers. The tabs and menus you open, the forms you fill out, and the end goals are all absorbed and become a repeatable pattern that Claude created. When you stop recording, Claude doesn't just remember the clicks; he understands the sequence as a task that he can repeat when asked.
I recorded myself conducting a series of checks on the various reward programs I belong to and recording the results in a spreadsheet. When I asked Claude in Chrome to “run the rewards points verification workflow,” he followed my instructions. Claude handled it quite well, with only a couple of password errors slowing things down. The AI even suggested making it a monthly routine that I wouldn't even have to check.
And even though the project required a lot of tabs, Claude kept them all in his small workspace, running everything in parallel without me having to control even the submission of passwords.
Claude knows everything
At this uncertain boundary between helping and supervising, I began to feel that I might have shared too much with the AI. Automating interactions, especially those involving passwords, means revealing personal information to Claude. Each new permission widens the door through which Claude can pass. And since I'm not watching all the time, I might not even know I'm logged into an account.
There's nothing mean about it. When you run an automation workflow, Claude asks for permissions. However, the way he fits into your online experience makes you wonder how much of your digital life you've opened up to Claude's scrutiny.
It's capabilities like these that make Claude in Chrome more useful than lighter AI extensions that are limited to visible text. Comparing Claude in Chrome with other AI browser extensions makes this difference more obvious. Tools attached to models, such as ChatGPT, are often limited to reshaping text or summarizing selected articles. Claude is designed to identify context and act accordingly. On the other hand, Claude's deep dives mean that he is acting as your representative without you even being there.
I might have tried Claude in Chrome even if not for the article, but it convinced me that as “AI agents” become more ubiquitous and powerful, the question of trusting the AI with your data will have implications for how it is deployed online in real time, as well as how it is absorbed into the models that support AI assistants. Anthropic acknowledges this and even notes that people shouldn't use the automated version of Claude for tasks like banking. However, with proper privacy protections, I can use Claude to do all the tedious things I have to do online, although I will still check it from time to time.
Follow TechRadar on Google News. And add us as your preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the “Subscribe” button!
And of course you can also Follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxing videos and get regular updates from us on whatsapp too much.
The best business laptops for any budget.
