The initial ChatGPT was trained until September 2021, due to which users had limited knowledge and access to current scenarios. In March 2023, ChatGPT opened internet browsing for Plus subscribers in order to stay up-to-date with news and information. This feature is called “Browse with Bing”.
The Browse with Bing feature allowed plus-users to access recent news, get citations and sources, and help with technical searches. Just a few days after its release, the feature was blocked as it was exploited by users to break through paywalls.
Last week, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, announced on X (formerly called Twitter) that ChatGPT is back to giving access to internet browsing. As per OpenAI, browsing is available to Plus and Enterprise users and will expand to all users soon. To enable the feature, choose Browse with Bing in the selector under GPT-4.
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ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources. It is no longer limited to data before September 2021. -OpenAI (Source: X, formerly Twitter) |
Additionally, OpenAI's ChatGPT has also got a major update that will enable the chatbot to have voice conversations with users and interact using images, moving it closer to popular artificial intelligence (AI) assistants like Apple's Siri. As per OpenAI, it can narrate bedtime stories and speak out loud text inputs from users.
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Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation. -OpenAI (Source: X, formerly Twitter) |
The "robots.txt" file serves as a means for website owners to control access to their site's content by web crawlers. Numerous websites have opted to prevent OpenAI's web crawler tool, GPTBot, from accessing their content due to concerns about unfair web scraping, potential copyright violations, and the absence of proper compensation or attribution.
As a result, while ChatGPT is connected to the internet, it will not have access to content from various news sources such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Reuters, CNN, as well as websites like Amazon, Wikihow, Quora, Shutterstock, and Indeed.
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