OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot has taken the world by storm. The platform has changed the way people search and create content. OpenAI has now added a new plugin to the popular AI-powered chatbot which allows it to retrieve information from the internet.
The new feature is still in its “limited” alpha stage. The plugin will first only be accessible to a restricted group of users before expanding to larger-scale access. According to a March 23, release from the company, users must register for a waitlist in order to access the new function on ChatGPT Plus.
What are ChatGPT’s plugins?
Tools called plugins are made expressly for language models with safety as their guiding principle. These add-ons facilitate ChatGPT’s usage of third-party services, computations, and access to current data.
There are only 11 plugins available at the moment. These plugins enable users to do a variety of things, such as check the results of live sporting events, book an international flight, and order food for delivery. In order to evaluate its practical application, the company noted that it is “gradually rolling out plugins.” The group of websites supported by the new plugin functionality includes travel search engines Expedia and KAYAK as well as e-commerce platforms Shopify, Klarna, and Instacart.
ChatGPT uses a text-based web browser to interact with webpages and traverse search results while also conducting information searches using the Bing API. It can combine data from various sources to produce a more well-rounded result. In order for users to confirm where ChatGPT obtained its response from, it also cites the sources it used. Since the company introduced ChatGPT on November 30, OpenAI claimed there has been a significant increase in demand from its user base for plug-in capabilities.
The ChatGPT plugin API was first used by Mitchell Hashimoto, the founder of the software company HashiCorp, who also told his 94,300 Twitter followers on March 23 that it is one of the most “impressive” computer programs he has ever used.