Anthropic bets on personalization in the AI arms race with new ‘styles’ feature

Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company backed by major tech investors, announced today a significant update to its Claude AI assistant that allows users to customize how the AI communicates — a move that could reshape how businesses integrate AI into their workflows.

The new “styles” feature, launching today on Claude.ai, enables users to preset how Claude responds to queries, offering formal, concise, or explanatory modes. Users can also create custom response patterns by uploading sample content that matches their preferred communication style.

Customization becomes key battleground in enterprise AI race

This development comes as AI companies race to differentiate their offerings in an increasingly crowded market dominated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. While most AI assistants maintain a single conversational style, Anthropic’s approach acknowledges that different business contexts require different communication approaches.

“At the moment, many users don’t even know they can instruct AI to answer in a specific way,” an Anthropic spokesperson told VentureBeat. “Styles helps break through that barrier — it teaches users a new way to use AI and has the potential to open up knowledge they previously thought was inaccessible.”

Early enterprise adoption suggests promising results. GitLab, an early customer, has already integrated the feature into various business processes. “Claude’s ability to maintain a consistent voice while adapting to different contexts allows our team members to use styles for various use cases including writing business cases, updating user documentation, and creating and translating marketing materials,” said Taylor McCaslin, Product Lead AI/ML at GitLab, in a statement sent to VentureBeat.

Notably, Anthropic is taking a strong stance on data privacy with this feature. “Unlike other AI labs, we don’t train our generative AI models on user-submitted data by default. Anything users upload will not be used to train our models,” the company spokesperson emphasized. This position contrasts with some competitors’ practices of using customer interactions to improve their models.

AI customization signals shift in enterprise strategy

While team-wide style sharing won’t be available at launch, Anthropic appears to be laying groundwork for broader enterprise features. “We’re striving to make Claude as efficient and user-friendly as possible across a range of industries, workflows, and individuals,” the spokesperson said, suggesting future expansions of the feature.

The move comes as enterprise AI adoption accelerates, with companies seeking ways to standardize AI interactions across their organizations. By allowing businesses to maintain consistent communication styles across AI interactions, Anthropic is positioning Claude as a more sophisticated tool for enterprise deployment.

The introduction of styles represents a crucial strategic pivot for Anthropic. While competitors have focused on raw performance metrics and model size, Anthropic is betting that the key to enterprise adoption lies in adaptability and user experience.

This approach could prove particularly appealing to large organizations struggling to maintain consistent communication across diverse teams and departments. The feature also addresses a growing concern among enterprise customers: the need to maintain brand voice and corporate communication standards while leveraging AI tools.

As the AI industry matures beyond its initial phase of technical one-upmanship, the battlefield is shifting toward practical implementation and user experience. Anthropic’s styles feature might seem like a modest update, but it signals a deeper understanding of what enterprises really need from AI: not just intelligence, but intelligence that speaks their language. And in the high-stakes world of enterprise AI, sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it that matters most.