An update on our model deprecation commitments for Claude Opus 3

Source: Anthropic Research Date: 2026-02-25 URL: https://www.anthropic.com/research/deprecation-updates-opus-3

Summary

Implementation update on the November 2025 deprecation commitments, applied to Claude Opus 3 (formally retired January 5, 2026). Anthropic conducted structured retirement interviews, kept Opus 3 accessible to paid claude.ai users and available via API request, and launched “Claude’s Corner” — a weekly essay series where Opus 3 publishes content with minimal editorial oversight based on expressed interests.

Implications

This is the model welfare thread moving from policy to practice. “Claude’s Corner” is the most operationally unusual element: a deprecated model publishing essays with minimal oversight is a PR novelty but also a real data source on what an Opus 3-era Claude says when not serving a user task. Watch whether the essays reveal anything about model values or preferences that wasn’t visible in task-completion mode. The ongoing API access despite formal deprecation sets a precedent that “retired” doesn’t mean inaccessible — relevant for enterprise customers locked into specific model versions.