Claude can now be used by California government organizations at a reduced cost thanks to an agreement between Anthropic and Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Businesses are finding it difficult to control the high expenses of enterprise AI tool subscriptions at the time of this agreement.
Claude, Anthropic’s AI chatbot, will be available to all state agencies and local governments as part of the agreement, along with Anthropic’s training and assistance. According to a press release from the Governor’s office, Claude will assist governmental personnel with information analysis and document drafting.
In a statement, Governor Newsom stated, “AI should not replace the human work of government; it should help our workers move faster, solve problems more effectively, and deliver better results for Californians.”
This agreement comes after Newsom’s executive order from March, which aims to strengthen safety regulations while accelerating the use of AI “to make government more efficient.”
“We’re focused on doing this the right way, while others in Washington are designing policy and creating contracts in the shadow of misuse,” Newsom stated at the time.
The federal government has turned Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor, into an enemy as the company develops stronger ties with the state of California. The U.S. Department of Defense and Anthropic disagreed earlier this year over a deal that would allow the government organization to employ Claude for any legitimate purpose. Anthropic aimed to clearly define safeguards that stop the government from utilizing its technology to monitor citizens or use autonomous weaponry without human supervision. The agency instead inked an agreement with OpenAI when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declined. Anthropic was barred from collaborating with any other Pentagon contractors after the government went so far as to designate the company as a “supply-chain risk.”
Although the state’s course obviously deviates from the federal government’s, California’s CIO and director of the Department of Technology, Chris Given, told POLITICO that during the negotiations of this Anthropic contract, the supply-chain risk label “just didn’t come up.”