Anthropic has announced a major update for its AI assistant, Claude. The service's latest feature is designed to improve productivity through enhanced integration with Google Workspace.

Claude AI can now connect to your Google account, and pull information from Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. It can use the data to summarize emails, identify upcoming meetings, and retrieve critical documents upon request. For example, users can simply ask it to pull meeting notes from last week, identify action items from follow-up email threads, and search relevant documents for additional context. Claude will provide the relevant information and streamlines the preparation process for busy professionals who would have otherwise had to sift through hours of work. In other words, it can perform agentic AI tasks.

Google's own AI, Gemini, is already integrated within Google Workspace and may be sufficient for many users, and offers even more features. But Claude users may appreciate the new agentic capabilities.

A standout feature in this latest update for Claude is the new Research Mode, which acts as a full-time research assistant that is designed to perform complex searches and consolidate information from both internal and external sources. It can deliver comprehensive insights, catering specifically to research-oriented tasks, all backed by citations. Research mode is currently available in beta for Max, Team, and Enterprise users, in the U.S., Japan, and Brazil. Other users will have to wait as the rollout progresses. Anthropic's Web search is available in Brazil and Japan, the feature had been launched in the U.S. in March. The Verge reports that Research Mode is expected to be available in Claude Pro's plan soon, the subscription costs $20 a month.

AI assistants like Claude are becoming more integrated and proactive, thus automating time-consuming tasks such as meeting preparations and information gathering, making daily workflows considerably more efficient.