How Claude's new AI data analysis tool compares to ChatGPT's version (hint: it doesn't)

Last week, Anthropic (which has a $4B investment from Amazon) announced that Claude 3.5 Sonnet now supports data analysis.

TechCruch's headline for this capability was "Anthropic's AI can now run and write code." That is technically correct, but don't get too excited. Claude isn't going to sit there and simulate all your code for you. The reality is a lot more limited.

Also: Could AI make data science obsolete?

The feature that Anthropic announced is similar to ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis. One difference is that Claude's analysis tool is available to everyone, including free users. ChatGPT's Advanced Data Analysis is only available to Plus and Enterprise account users paying $20 or more a month.

Generating code

Both ChatGPT Plus and Claude perform their data analysis by writing and running snippets of code that parse and process the data. One ...