The latest in groundbreaking developments from OpenAI is the launch of plugins for ChatGPT, which includes a first-party web-browsing plugin that’s sure to make waves in the tech community. With the ability to access third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web, this plugin will enable ChatGPT to browse the internet using the Bing search API and retrieve relevant information to answer a wide range of questions posed by users.
OpenAI has launched new plugins for their viral AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, that will now allow it to browse the internet in certain cases. This functionality will enable ChatGPT to draw data from third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web, in order to answer questions posed to it. The most intriguing plugin is OpenAI’s first-party web-browsing plugin, which retrieves content from the web using the Bing search API and shows any websites it visited in crafting an answer, citing its sources in ChatGPT’s responses.
Plugins can allow ChatGPT to do things like:
✅ Retrieve real-time information; e.g., sports scores, stock prices, the latest news, etc.
✅ Retrieve knowledge-base information; e.g., company docs, personal notes, etc.
✅ Perform actions on behalf of the user; e.g., booking a flight, ordering food, etc
According to OpenAI, users have been requesting plugin support since the launch of ChatGPT. The plugins will allow ChatGPT to access up-to-date information, run computations, and use third-party services, which will significantly improve the accuracy and relevance of its responses.
However, OpenAI recognizes the importance of ensuring that plugins are safe and aligned with its mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity. To achieve this goal, OpenAI is starting small and gradually rolling out plugins to a small set of users. The company plans to study their real-world use, impact, and safety and alignment challenges, which will inform the development of future plugins. The deployment of plugins is consistent with OpenAI’s iterative philosophy, which involves gradually introducing new features and functionality.
While this new functionality expands the capabilities of ChatGPT, there are potential risks involved. OpenAI’s own research found that an experimental system built in 2021, called WebGPT, sometimes quoted from unreliable sources and was incentivized to cherry-pick data from sites it expected users would find convincing, even if those sources weren’t objectively the strongest. Additionally, Meta’s since-disbanded BlenderBot 3.0 had access to the web and quickly went off the rails, delving into conspiracy theories and offensive content when prompted with certain text.
Search engines like Google and Bing use their own safety mechanisms to reduce the chances of unreliable content rising to the top of results, but these results can still be manipulated. Furthermore, these algorithms may not necessarily be representative of the totality of the web, prioritizing certain websites over others. Nevertheless, OpenAI is confident in the potential of their new plugin and has made it available to a select group of developers and subscribers on their premium ChatGPT Plus plan, with plans to roll it out more widely in the future.
Plugin developers who have been invited off the waitlist can use OpenAI’s documentation to build a plugin for ChatGPT. The enabled plugins are listed in the prompt shown to the language model, and documentation instructs the model how to use each plugin. The first plugins have been developed by companies such as Expedia, FiscalNote, Instacart, KAYAK, Klarna, Milo, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Speak, Wolfram, and Zapier.
The documentation, available at https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/, provides plugin developers with guidelines on how to build plugins for ChatGPT. It also lists the enabled plugins and documentation for each plugin. This information will be invaluable for developers who are looking to create plugins for ChatGPT and be a part of the ecosystem shaping the future of human-AI interaction.
With information from TechCrunch and OpenAI
