If you ever need proof that the world of AI tech moves at the speed of light, you only need to take a peek at what Anthropic is doing. Just over a month ago, I took to the stand to report that Anthropic had just released Opus 4.7 to the public, and that the new model posted some impressive improvements over the last model. Well, here I am again to say that Opus 4.7 is old news, and that 4.8 is here to make the previous model look outdated.

Claude Opus 4.8 posts even better benchmarks than its previous month-old model

Anthropic will run out of version numbers before its momentum fizzles out

Anthropic broke down what's new with Claude Opus 4.8 over on its blog. You can see the progress the company made over 4.7 in the chart above. The most notable upgrades are in agentic coding (with almost a 5 percentage point increase in capabilities) and in agentic terminal coding (with over an 8 percentage point increase). Remember, Claude Opus 4.7 came out mid-April, and Anthropic is already serving up a new version with big improvements.

However, apart from the statistical upgrades, Claude's Opus 4.8 model comes with a nice additional trait: it will no longer lie to your face as often. As Anthropic puts it:

​​​​​​​One of the most prominent improvements in Opus 4.8 is its honesty. We train all our models to be honest—for instance, to avoid making claims that they can’t support. But a general problem with AI models is that they sometimes jump to conclusions, confidently claiming to have made progress in their work despite the evidence being thin. Early testers report that Opus 4.8 is more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims.

You can give Claude Opus 4.8 a spin right now, so be sure to try it out and see how it improves your workflow. And I suppose I'll see you again next month when Anthropic inevitably releases Opus 4.9 then.