Artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has announced a significant upgrade to its Cowork AI assistant, known as Claude Opus 4.6. This update aims to enhance Claude’s capabilities in office work and coding tasks, sparking concerns that it could potentially replace specialized software packages.
The new model allows Claude to process more information at once, making it better suited for handling complex tasks like data analysis and design decisions. Anthropic claims the upgrade outperforms its rival OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 model in certain fields, such as finance and law.
While some experts worry that AI could lead to job losses, particularly among entry-level tech workers, others argue that the technology is not yet ready to transform the job market just yet. Security concerns and the need for legacy enterprise software providers to adapt are seen as major barriers to widespread adoption.
Anthropic’s CEO believes Opus 4.6 will be an “inflection point” in knowledge work, enabling more efficient collaboration between humans and machines. However, technology analyst Jacob Bourne cautions that “panic over this is probably misplaced,” but acknowledges the need for industry evolution.
The new model also includes improvements for software engineers, allowing coding duties to be split across teams of agents. The update has sparked concerns about the impact on specialized research and financial analysis software stocks, with some companies’ shares plummeting in recent days.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/05/tech/anthropic-opus-update-software-stocks