ChatGPT developer OpenAI gave its chatbot access to some third-party knowledge sources on Wednesday.
The new plugins will allow the AI-powered language model to browse the internet in certain cases.
- Prior to its first-party web-browsing plugin, ChatGPT's knowledge base was limited to information dated to September 2021 or before.
- Only a limited number of developers and subscribers to the ChatGPT Plus plan will initially be given access to the new capabilities.
- OpenAI said it will roll out wider access to the capabilities along with API access sometime in the future.
- One of OpenAI's earlier projects, WebGPT, quoted unreliable sources from the internet and cherry-picked data that it expected its users to find convincing.
- Meta's web-enabled BlenderBot 3.0 gave its users answers from sources of offensive content and conspiracy theories.
- OpenAI noted that giving ChatGPT web-enabled functionality introduces new risks but insists that it has “implemented several safeguards.”
