Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has rolled out Claude Opus 4.8, the latest version of its flagship AI model, as competition in the AI race intensifies against rivals such as OpenAI and its GPT-5.5 model. The new release focuses heavily on coding, reasoning, transparency and long-running AI agent tasks. Alongside performance upgrades, Anthropic has introduced new controls that allow users to decide how much effort the model should spend on solving a problem, a feature many developers are calling "Ultracode mode" because of its ability to work through complex coding challenges for extended periods.
