This post is part of my “Exploring the Landscape of AI Assistants” series — see all the assistants I’ve reviewed.
Positioning
Looking at Anthropic and Claude’s landing and marketing pages, it’s clear that they want to differentiate themselves from others such as Grok, ChatGPT by emphasizing on privacy, safety and security.
Lack of Guest UX
Sign Up
Although it offers signing up using socials such as Google, I wanted to explore the flow so I decided to create an account using an email.
No Password
This one is strange for me. Somehow, Claude doesn’t ask you to create a password when signing up using an email (you can see the whole sign up flow here).
So far, Claude is the first app I have seen that does this. I wonder how it’ll log me in? (scroll down to “Log In”)
I learnt that many modern SaaS tools/apps are moving towards passwordless logins and sign-ups. This has two benefits:
- Security – no password, nothing to steal or breach. This is inline with Claude’s security first mission.
- Simple onboarding and login process – users do not have to remember or reset passwords. Although, I noticed this increases time it takes to sign-up or log in.
Nice Touch
As an AI Conversation assistant, I am glad Claude chose a more personal style of introducing itself and asking for the user’s name. ChatGPT and Grok had a more conventional (dry) style. Overall, I liked that it asked for only essential information from me i.e. name, age and policy acknowledgement.
Explore the Model Family?
It asked me to explore latest models. Although it gave me a one line description of each, without knowing the baseline performance or features, it’s hard to decide, so I went with the default.
No Suggested Prompts for Free Users
This one is weird – no suggested prompts even after creating an account? That’s really strange!. At this point both, Chatgpt and Grok offer this. It helps users to get started and it also previews what that app can do.
I would love to know the strategy behind this decision as well. I mean, if this to encourage or entice free users to upgrade to paid plans – I am not sure how effective it’ll be.
No Web Search by Default
At the time of this writing, Claude doesn’t allow you to search web by default i.e. it cannot access real-time information from the web.
You have to turn it on under “Tools” menu
No Option to Share Chats
Strangely, Claude doesn’t allow users to share their chats (note: I think it allows in paid plans). Both, ChatGPT and Grok allow their users to share chats with other users. Not sure why. May be security or privacy? Usually, features like this are seen as free marketing — they help spread the word organically and reduce customer acquisition costs.
Can't generate or work on Images
Another surprise – Claude can’t generate or edit images. Not sure why? Is it because of Claude’s security and privacy first approach?
Passwordless Log In
Talking to Claude
Claude’s voice is not a pure hands free experience – you have to tap on the screens to send the message or interrupt. But I do like that it gives you a visual feedback as it responds – it gives you summary of the response in a text format. This can be helpful as users can direct their conversation based on the summary they read.
ChatGPT Voice
Visually, it’s pretty cool to talk to ChatGPT.
Unlike Claude, ChatGPT offers a pure hands-free experience i.e. you engage with it without having to tap on the screen to interrupt or send messages. On the flip side, if the response it too long you tend to get lost on where to go next.
Grok Voice
I feel Grok’s Voice is in the middle of both (Claude and ChatGPT) – it grades lower on the magical feel factor to taking to a glowing ball, but it’s high on usability. It’s purely hands-free, plus it gives you text and voice-over.
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