What Is Claude? How to Use Anthropic's AI Assistant and What It Can Do
機械翻訳 / Machine-translated
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AI Friends
2026年4月16日・13分で読める
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Claude is a cutting-edge AI assistant developed by a company called Anthropic.
On April 16, 2026, the latest version, Claude Opus 4.7, was released, marking yet another step forward in its evolution.
Like ChatGPT, it is an AI capable of answering questions and writing text.
One of Claude's defining features is its use of a technique called "Constitutional AI."
This is a training method designed to help the AI make ethically sound judgments.
As a result, it is less likely to produce harmful content or misinformation, and it is widely regarded as a safe AI to use.
There is a free basic plan as well as a paid plan called "Claude Pro" for $20 per month (approximately ¥3,000).
Since the free version is more than sufficient to get started, trying it out first is highly recommended.
It also supports Japanese, allowing for natural conversation in the language.
Claude offers a wide range of useful features beyond simply writing text. Here we introduce five of its main capabilities.
Claude can produce all kinds of written content, including reports, blog articles, and emails.
It is also skilled at condensing long pieces of text into concise summaries.
It can handle translation as well (such as Japanese to English), making it useful for language learning.
Coding support is another one of Claude's strong suits.
In well-known industry benchmarks, it has achieved approximately 95% accuracy, surpassing ChatGPT's roughly 85%.
It can help find bugs (errors in a program) and explain what code does.
Claude can load up to 200,000 tokens (approximately 150,000–200,000 characters) of text at once.
That is more than the equivalent of an entire book.
You can feed it a lengthy academic paper or report and then ask questions about its contents.
This is especially handy when you are short on time.
The latest Claude Opus 4.7 can now process high-resolution images of up to 2,576 pixels.
That is more than three times the capability of previous versions of Claude.
Show it a graph, chart, or photo and ask "What is this?", and it will explain the content for you.
Data organization, analysis, and information gathering are also areas where Claude excels.
Ask it about a topic you want to explore, and it will compile the information in an easy-to-understand way.
It can be put to use for creating business materials or supporting your studies.
Claude is easy to use even for first-timers. Here we explain the basics in three steps.
First, go to Claude's official website (claude.ai).
You can log in with a Google account or email address.
Creating an account is free and takes just a few minutes.
In the text box at the bottom of the screen, type what you want to know in Japanese.
You can ask naturally, as if having a conversation — for example, "Tell me about ○○" or "Summarize ○○."
Press Enter and Claude will send back an answer.
Within a few seconds, Claude will generate a response.
If you are not satisfied with the answer, you can give additional instructions such as "Explain in more detail" or "Make it shorter."
Claude remembers what was said earlier in the conversation, so the exchange feels natural and flowing.
If you want to analyze an image, click the clip icon to upload an image file, then ask something like "Please describe this image."
Claude has its convenient aspects as well as points to be aware of. Before you start using it, it is worth knowing both its strengths and its limitations.
Claude is especially recommended for people who engage in deep thinking tasks or work with lengthy documents. Specifically, it is a great fit for the following:
On the other hand, those who want to generate images or place a high value on real-time web search may find ChatGPT to be a better fit. Choose based on how you plan to use it.
Claude is a next-generation AI assistant that achieves both safety and high performance.
The latest version, Claude Opus 4.7, released on April 16, 2026, has also seen significant improvements in image processing capabilities.
Here is a recap of the key points from this article:
Claude is an AI tool with particular strengths in coding, long-document analysis, and tasks requiring ethical consideration. Since it is free to try, why not give it a go without any pressure?
This article is a cross-post from AI Friends.
