Anthropic's Claude for Word is another challenge to Microsoft's software empire, and a bid to appeal to lawyers

Anthropic launched a beta version of Claude for Word, another challenge to Microsoft's software empire and a bid to appeal more to the legal profession.

The AI startup, having pushed Claude into Excel and PowerPoint earlier this year, said its latest add-in for Word is "designed for professionals who work extensively with documents, particularly in legal review, financial memo drafting, and iterative editing."

On Saturday, Anthropic said Claude for Word would allow users to ask questions about their documents and get answers with clickable section citations.

Other features include the ability to edit selected text while preserving surrounding styles, numbering, and formatting, while a "tracked changes mode" would allow users to accept or reject every edit as a revision, Anthropic explained.

Claude could also work through comment threads, editing the anchored text and replying with what it changed, according to the release.

Anthropic gave examples of prompts lawyers could try when reviewing a legal contract while using Claude for Word.

It's currently available only to Team and Enterprise plans.

With this and other recent launches, Anthropic is making clear it no longer wants to be known primarily as a tool for developers. It wants Claude embedded across the enterprise, supporting finance teams, HR departments, analysts, and executives alike.