Anthropic, the creators of the Claude AI chatbot, has unveiled a groundbreaking tool that could pave the way for AI to seamlessly interact with your phone and computer apps.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is designed to provide a secure, open-source channel between any AI assistant and any app or data source, creating a universal standard for app-AI integrations.
Currently, AI assistants like Google’s Gemini can only access their own ecosystem apps, such as Gmail or Google Calendar, with user consent.
However, MCP promises to change this by enabling third-party AI apps to connect with any app’s data securely, without requiring direct collaboration between developers and platform owners like Google or Apple.
The tool was demoed with Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, showing how easy it is to create an AI-to-app integration, such as building a new GitHub repository in under an hour.
While the protocol is open-source, it’s optimized for Claude’s most recent version, the 3.5 Sonnet model. Developers, including companies like Zed, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph, have already integrated MCP into their systems.
As Apple gears up for its own AI functionalities with Apple Intelligence and a revamped Siri, MCP could become a critical piece of the puzzle in making AI assistants more powerful and intuitive across various platforms.
However, questions around privacy and data security remain, especially as app developers will increasingly be under pressure to allow AI access to their data.
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