The AI chatbot wars just got a whole lot more interesting. Claude, the plucky underdog challenger to OpenAI’s GPT-3 behemoth, just dropped a massive update that puts it neck and neck with ChatGPT – and arguably pulls ahead in some way. And the best part? You can try Claude right now, totally free. The new and improved Claude boasts a slew of upgrades that make it sound way more human-like Claude AI features explained. It’s got better memory, so it can keep track of the conversation and follow a train of thought over multiple turns. It’s way more knowledgeable, with a cutoff date of September 2021 compared to ChatGPT’s 2021 cutoff knowledge cutoff date. And it’s got a ton more personality, with the ability to adapt to different tones and styles. But what really sets Claude apart is its focus on safety and ethics. Unlike some AI models we could mention cough*ChatGPT*cough, Claude is designed from the ground up with safeguards to prevent it from spewing out hate speech, misinformation, or other toxic junk. It’s got built-in filters and flags to catch problematic prompts, and it’s even got a special “assistant” mode where it’ll only respond in a helpful and harmless way. Image: Anthropic Of course, no AI is perfect, and Claude’s still got its quirks and flaws. Sometimes it gets a bit too chatty or repetitive. It’s not always perfect at understanding context or following complex instructions. And let’s be real, it’s still a for-profit product from a tech…Claude’s huge update makes it the best ChatGPT rival (so far)