Anthropic has officially entered the AI voice chat race with the launch of voice mode for Claude, its popular chatbot. The feature, currently in beta, is being gradually released to users of Claude’s mobile app and will support English conversations over the next few weeks.
According to updates from Anthropic’s official X account and its website, voice mode allows for full back-and-forth spoken conversations with Claude. This new feature is powered by Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 model and is designed to make conversations feel more natural, especially when your hands are occupied.
“Voice mode transforms how you interact with Claude,” reads an official support page. “You can now talk to Claude and hear it talk back while seeing key points displayed on-screen.” This feature allows users to engage hands-free, making it ideal for multitasking or use on the go.
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Users can start a voice chat to ask Claude to summarize their calendar, dig through documents, or answer questions aloud. It even offers five different voice options, allowing users to choose how Claude sounds. You can also switch seamlessly between text and voice and view summaries and transcripts after each conversation.
While free users can enjoy basic voice features, there are some limits. Most free users can expect around 20 to 30 conversations per month within their usage cap. However, premium users get enhanced functionality, including a Google Workspace connector that enables Claude to interact with Gmail and Google Calendar. Integration with Google Docs is reserved exclusively for Claude Enterprise subscribers.
Anthropic joins a growing list of AI firms bringing voice to their bots. OpenAI has a similar feature for ChatGPT, Google offers Gemini Live, and xAI supports Voice Mode for Grok. All of these aim to make interacting with AI as smooth and natural as talking to a friend.
Voice interactions are gaining popularity, not only for convenience but also for making AI assistants feel more like human collaborators. Anthropic’s implementation adds thoughtful extras like on-screen summaries and the ability to toggle between voice and text on demand.
Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer, Mike Krieger, hinted at these developments back in March during an interview with the Financial Times. The company was reportedly in talks with Amazon and ElevenLabs to enhance voice capabilities, though it’s unclear which partnerships contributed to this rollout.
Whether you’re summarizing emails or searching through files, voice mode for Claude looks set to bring a more conversational experience to AI, one you can hear, not just read.
