Even as AI-centric browsers proliferate, AI brands are keeping one hand firmly on the branch of the traditional browser before entrusting their full weight to the Perplexity Comets, Opera Neons, and OpenAI ChatGPT Atlases of the world.

Anthropic’s Claude, one of ChatGPT’s primary competitors, has announced an open, public beta of its new Chrome browser extension. You have to be a paying subscriber. So that means no extension for those of you using the free version, you cheapskate.

Claude AI Brings Its Chatbot to Chrome via a Browser Extension

As long as you’ve got the extension installed and you’re using Chrome as your browser, the extension will leverage Claude AI to navigate websites, fill in forms for you, and complete more complex tasks across several websites and tabs.

I doubt it’ll be as powerful as an AI-centric browser that builds AI functionality into its very core from the start. Still, it should cut down on the multitasking, tab switching, and hand-holding required when just using AI in a browser window, as is currently typical.

Go to the Google Chrome extension store and download it here. You install it just like any other browser extension.

Because so many alternative browsers, from Brave to Opera, use the same underlying engine as Chrome (the Chromium engine), you can use the new Claude extension on those, too.

But that leaves the non-Chromium browsers in the dust. There aren’t many. Namely, there are Firefox, Mullvad, and LibreWolf, which are all based on Firefox’s Gecko engine.

Remember that the extension is a beta, so bugs and hang-ups are practically inevitable. Beta doesn’t just mean early access. It means the company is testing its product with the public to identify potential bugs through regular use and fix them.

If computer bugs and unstable software annoy you, it’s best to wait for the full, stable release.