OpenAI's ChatGPT has proven to be an incredibly powerful and engaging tool since its launch in November 2022. However, its knowledge was limited to information available up to September 2021. This limitation has changed with a recent announcement from OpenAI.
OpenAI recently revealed, on X (formerly Twitter), that ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide up-to-date and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources. This functionality is made possible through an integration with Microsoft's Bing search engine.
This enhanced capability is available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers and ChatGPT Enterprise users. Users can access this feature by selecting it from the drop-down menu under the GPT-4 selector at the top of the application.
Interestingly, this marks a return to web browsing for ChatGPT. In a previous release in March, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT third-party plugins, including two of its own: Code Interpreter (now named "Advanced Data Analysis") and "Browsing." The latter utilized the Microsoft Bing API and a text-based browser to search the web and summarize information for users, complete with citations that users could access by hovering over and clicking.
However, the browsing feature was temporarily disabled after users found ways to bypass paywalls of leading news publishers. Now, the browsing feature has made a return, with measures in place to exclude these sites. OpenAI's ChatGPT browsing feature now recognizes the "robots.txt" code that website owners use to exclude content from web crawlers like Google.
It's important to note that Microsoft's Bing Chat, introduced in February, is powered by a new, more powerful OpenAI large language model than ChatGPT. This version also includes the ability to browse the web with ChatGPT-style functionality and citations.
Differences between using Bing Chat powered by OpenAI and using ChatGPT browsing with Bing Chat exist. Sources familiar with the situation have revealed that the ChatGPT interface allows users to utilize browsing seamlessly within the ChatGPT interface while benefiting from its other features.
These new browsing capabilities for ChatGPT arrive shortly after OpenAI announced other significant features. Just two days prior, OpenAI announced ChatGPT's ability to scan and analyze images and conduct conversations over audio, including analyzing uploaded audio from users and generating responses in a natural voice. Additionally, OpenAI unveiled DALL-E 3, a new image generation model designed to leverage ChatGPT's natural language processing and conversational capabilities.
