Claude is a family of large language models developed by Anthropic. The first model was released in March 2023. The Claude 3 family, released in March 2024, consists of three models: Haiku optimized for speed, Sonnet balancing capabilities and performance, and Opus designed for complex reasoning tasks. These models can process both text and images, with Claude 3 Opus demonstrating enhanced capabilities in areas like mathematics, programming, and logical reasoning compared to previous versions.