At the HumanX conference, everyone was talking about Claude | TechCrunch

At the HumanX AI conference in San Francisco this week, thousands of techies descended upon the city’s Moscone Center, where discussion focused on the ways agentic AI is changing the business. Agents, which automate business and coding tasks, have begun to be deployed across industries — largely through enterprise and consumer-focused chatbots. Naturally, I wanted to know which chatbot was the most popular, and I consistently heard one name most often: Claude. Anthropic got shoutouts in many of the panels held throughout the week, but it also was a topic of discussion with the vendors I spoke to while perusing the convention room floor. The chatbot I didn’t hear a lot about? ChatGPT. One of the vendors I spoke to made a point of telling me that he and his team used Claude a lot, while he felt ChatGPT and OpenAI had gone downhill — or, as the internet likes to say, “fell off.” Lately, that does not appear to be a particularly unique take. Indeed, it’s not clear what will cure the perception that, despite a recent $122 billion funding round and its upcoming IPO, OpenAI has lost its footing—or, at the very least, seems increasingly unsure of what the next step is. Part of the problem may be a perception that the company lacks focus. Last month, OpenAI abandoned a number of long simmering side-quests (including its AI video generator Sora and a troubled plan to launch a “sexy” version of ChatGPT), locking in instead on the focuses of business and coding services. In the meanti...