Pokemon Red is a first-generation Pokemon game where players aim to become the next Pokemon League Champion. The challenging gameplay and engaging user interface attract players to this platform. Recently Anthropic, an AI safety and research company has launched Claude Plays Pokemon on Twitch, showing the Anthropic’s new AI model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, playing the Pokemon Red game. The livestream showcases the capability of AI to give fascinating experiences, more than 1,500 people watched the livestream and were attracted.
What Is Pokemon Red?
Pokemon Red is a role-playing video game developed by Game Freak. In this game, players try to collect all Pokemon and defeat gym leaders to access the right to challenge the Pokemon League and become the next Pokemon League Champion. Beating the rivals and collecting all badges of the Kanto region, one wins the title of Pokemon League Champion.
Pokemon Red Gameplay
The gameplay begins at the Pallet Town, where a player acts as a young boy. After encountering a wild Pokemon, you will be taught how to catch Pokemon. Once you are skilled enough, you will be sent on your way as a fledgling Trainer.
Traveling through Kento, you must capture Pokemons and record their information in your Pokedex. In addition, players have to compete in gyms that are available in the regions to become better trainers. Once you prove yourself as a Pokemon Trainer, you will be taken to the Elite Four, where a group of skilled trainers will put their skills to the test. You also have to be watchful for Team Rocket, who may steal your Pokemon.
How Is Anthropic Claude AI Playing Pokemon Red?
Anthropic has broadcasted a live stream of its latest AI model playing the Pokemon Red video game on Twitch. The live stream which lasted more than nine hours has grabbed huge attention among people all over the world.
The live stream showed Claude, a Large Language Model (LLM) playing the classic Game Boy game ‘Pokemon Red’ alone. Unlike other conventional game bots that utilize predetermined conditions for their actions, Claude gains information from the game situation to understand the game scenario and make informed decisions similar to humans.
In the video, the main character in the game is controlled by Claude, who travels across the Kento region, talks to the NPCs, and hunts Pokemons similar to a human player. Though the earlier Claude 3.5 Sonnet failed to leave the main character’s house early, the new version, 3.7 Sonnet manages to win three gym director badges, showing its enhanced adaptability.
Limitations Of Anthropic Claude AI While Playing Pokemon Red
Though the Claude 3.7 Sonnet worked more effectively than the previous models, there are some intricacies encountered in the gameplay with Anthropic Claude. The gameplay was slower than a human and failed to move for a long time after hitting a wall. Claude has failed to communicate with characters which helps in the game’s progression, instead, it interacted with NPCs that the player already communicated.
Why Pokemon Red?
AI researchers have used many video games, from complex fighting games like Street Fighters to creative challenges like Pictionary, the list of games used to test the Claude 3.7 Sonnet is long. However, Pokemon Red was found ideal for the Anthropic Claude to work, the game puzzles, different paths, and progress tracking smoothly aligned with the capability of Claude.
The Pokemon Red’s strategic elements explore the ability of AI, letting developers know how widely AI can face challenges and solve problems. Anthropic’s AI approach is similar to Open AI’s O3 mini and Deepseek’s R1, finding new scopes of AI reasoning.
Bottom Line
The gaming industry has evolved widely in the past few years, blockchain games, metaverse, and now AI-assisted games have brought a new era of gaming. Claud Plays Pokemon is not just an AI-playing video game, it showcases the ability of AI to solve tasks and challenges similar to humans more precisely in less time. However, the slow game and difficulty in communications challenge the AI’s thinking ability, but we can expect a new launch with enhanced capabilities soon.
