Anthropic's latest AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, is now generally available on Amazon Bedrock in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region, offering organizations in the area access to advanced AI capabilities while maintaining local data compliance.

The upgraded model introduces a new experimental computer use capability in public beta, allowing it to generate computer actions like keystrokes and mouse clicks to accomplish complex tasks. According to Anthropic, it is the first frontier AI model to offer this functionality, albeit experimentally, and Anthropic expects the capability to improve over time.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet’s enhanced reasoning and problem-solving skills makes it the ideal model for complex cognitive tasks such as understanding nuanced instructions and context, generating creative solutions to problems, recognizing and correcting mistakes, and delivering more sophisticated analysis around complex data.

Performance data shows significant improvements over its predecessor, particularly in coding. The model achieved a 49% score on SWE-bench Verified, surpassing all publicly available models. As a multimodal model, it can process images and interpret charts and graphs, including text extraction from poorly scanned documents.

Several major organizations have already expressed interest in the regional deployment. Commonwealth Bank's Chief Data & Analytics Officer Andrew McMullan said the technology will help accelerate AI-driven customer experiences while keeping Australian data secure. Mat Finch, Head of Data & AI at nib Group, noted that the local availability will help them maintain data residency requirements while leveraging advanced AI capabilities.

“We’re currently leveraging Claude 3 Sonnet and Claude 3 Haiku models on Amazon Bedrock,” said Chris Fletcher, Chief Consumer & Business Officer, One New Zealand.

“AI allows our people to focus more on helping our customers and makes interacting with One NZ easier for those customers. AI supports our people in a number of ways, including providing automated case notes, putting customers through to the right person to help them first time, and understanding the root causes of customer pain points so we can fix these for customers”

The model's availability through Amazon Bedrock comes with IRAP assessment certification, allowing Australian government agencies and organizations to develop AI applications at the PROTECTED information classification level. AWS has announced plans for a $13.2 billion investment in Australia by 2027 to support digital transformation initiatives.

“The release of the upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet on Amazon Bedrock in the AWS Sydney Region represents a significant advancement in AI capabilities for organisations with local model hosting requirements. This innovative model combines advanced logical reasoning, contextual understanding, and synthesis with superior coding, writing and vision skills, enabling it to tackle more complex, multi-modal tasks with ease,” said Kale Temple, Partner, AI & Data at Deloitte Australia.