Web browsing and plugins for all needs: this is how the new features of ChatGPT work

Web browsing and plugins for all needs: this is how the new features of ChatGPT work

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The most obvious limitation of ChatGPT is that it is frozen in time. In fact, even the new version based on GPT 4 has been trained with data and information that reaches up to September 30, 2021: everything that happened after that simply doesn’t exist.

This, and other limitations of the most famous conversational artificial intelligence platform, are finally remedied by the arrival of web browsing and plugins, two functions announced a few weeks in alpha version for a few testers, and gradually active in beta from 12 May for users. Browsing the internet allows ChatGPT to search the internet, read and quote text from web pages, and open specific web pages. With plugins it is possible to add functions to ChatGPT that are not currently available, a bit like it happens for web browser extensions, from Chrome to Safari.

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Who can have them

Meanwhile, ChatGPT allows you to activate web browsing and use plugins only if you use the most recent version, i.e. GPT4. This means that beta features are only available to paid subscribers, which cost $20 a month. Sure, those who want to experiment with conversational AI don’t need to pay, but for those who work in it, at every level, the ability to access the latest OpenAI features is worth the expense. And it’s not the same as using Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, also based on GPT4: there’s a lot more to learn here for geeks.

Not everything is better, however: GPT4 is slower, and for casual use maybe someone will prefer the old version, which gives less elaborate but faster responses. Also because, among the many tangible improvements, fake news, hallucinations and other pitfalls remain exactly the same.

By May 20, communicates OpenAI, web browsing and plugins should be available in beta for all subscribers.

How you do it

Activating the features in beta is easy: just click on the three dots next to the account name, choose Settings and select Beta Features in the window that opens. Clicking on “Web Browsing” enables web browsing, the same goes for “Plugins”. To use the plugins, however, you must first install them, and for this there is a Store where you can choose the ones that best suit your needs. We’ve currently counted 87 plugins, all of which are free, but that number is likely to grow quickly. Those available are all free for now, however it is not said that in the future they cannot get others for a fee. As OpenAi notes, plugins are third-party applications and connect ChatGPT to external applications. If you activate a plugin, ChatGPT can send parts of the conversation or other data to the plugin to improve the conversation. We must therefore be careful to carefully read the descriptions of the various plugins and understand if it is possible to trust the developers, a bit like what happens, for example, with the apps in the Android Play Store. Once installed, ChatGPT automatically chooses when to use plugins during a conversation, depending on which ones are enabled. At the moment it is possible to use no more than three at a time, if you want to choose others you will have to start a new session and disable those you do not need. Attention, for now it is not possible to enable plugins and web browsing at the same time, but the problem can be partially solved by enabling a plugin that allows you to surf the internet.

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Which ones are they

Anyone who wants to use ChatGPT to play a quiz, organize a trip, learn about stock quotes or find a restaurant can now do all of this and more. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has just started rolling out a number of third-party plugins aimed at expanding the repertoire of the popular AI-powered chat service.

Existing plugins have been designed to cater to users across the spectrum, with those geared towards business, education, finance, investment, and personal interests. Using plugins from third-party providers such as Expedia, Slack, Kayak, Instacart and OpenTable, you can search for work, find real estate (US only, for now), get product recommendations, shop, play games and find recipes. There’s also Spotify, for creating prompt-based playlists, and Zapier, which offers the ability to interact with over 5,000 apps and online platforms.

Again, Link Reader can read the content of all types of links, including web pages, PDFs, images and more: all you have to do is provide a link and ask for information. Speak is a plugin that lets you learn to say anything in other languages, with many different ways to customize the translation.

Another plugin worth mentioning is World News, useful for reading the latest news and summarizing them in a handy list, complete with links. In our test, who knows why, in Italian it only provides Republic titles.

And finally, perhaps the most useful of all, There’s An AI for That, a plugin that guides you in choosing the right AI tool for every professional and personal need: just ask what you need, and chatGPT will direct you to the most suitable tool.

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The web

Browsing the web can really make the difference and bring news and information to ChatGPT that otherwise can only be found with Microsoft’s Bing or – in the countries where it is available – with Google’s Bard. Curiously, on the OpenAI platform you can use a plugin, or the native mode. It seemed to us that WebPilot gave more precise answers, but we reserve the right to try even longer. Native web browsing searches the web for links related to the request, then reads them, then provides a summary of the results. But for some reason it can’t always read the links, so the final text is often partial or out of date. But remember that this is a beta version, so it is normal for it to have bugs and malfunctions. What probably won’t change with the final version is the interaction capability of ChatGPT, which by decision of its creators cannot interact with web pages dynamically as a human user would. Cannot fill out forms, make purchases, access paid content, or view geo-blocked content.

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