Imagine your digital assistant not just waiting for commands, but organizing your work for you. Anthropic has introduced Claude Duet, an AI agent that takes over routine tasks while you're busy with other things. This is not just a chatbot, but an independent performer capable of working in the background, even when your device is turned off.
Claude Duet is powered by Claude Opus 5.5 and has its own virtual environment with a browser. This allows it to perform tasks that require access to external services: from organizing meetings and processing emails to tracking invoices and even creating financial forecasts. After completing a task, the agent will notify you or request confirmation.
The key difference is its ability to work autonomously. Duet can use over 6,000 connectors to popular services like Gmail, Slack, QuickBooks, and Shopify. It can even make online payments through a virtual card without revealing your real data. Anthropic assures that the security system prevents the leakage of confidential information, requiring your approval before any critical actions.
While this is currently a research, pre-release product, the potential is obvious. Such an assistant could free up a lot of time by offloading tasks to AI that previously required your constant attention. However, the developers admit that Duet is not yet perfect: errors in interpreting tasks or assessing their urgency are possible. Nevertheless, this is a significant step towards more proactive and independent digital assistants.