Anthropic’s Claude AI is playing Pokémon on Twitch — slowly

On Tuesday afternoon, Anthropic launched Claude Plays Pokémon on Twitch, a live stream of Anthropic’s newest AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, playing a game of Pokémon Red. It’s become a fascinating experiment of sorts, showcasing the capabilities of today’s AI tech and people’s reactions to them. AI researchers have used all sorts of video games, from Street Fighter to Pictionary, to test new models — often more for amusement than utility. But Anthropic said that Pokémon proved to be a useful benchmark for Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which can effectively “think” through the sorts of puzzles the game contains. Like OpenAI’s o3-mini and DeepSeek’s R1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet can “reason” its way through tough challenges, like playing a video game designed for children. While the model’s non-reasoning predecessor, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, failed the very beginning of Pokémon Red — exiting the player’s home in Pallet Town — Claude 3.7 Sonnet managed to win three gym leader badges. Claude struggles to exit a b ... Read full article.