What are ChatGPT's new web browsing and plugins betas, and who can use them?

Yesterday, May 12, 2023, OpenAI posted a short entry in its ChatGPT release notes: web browsing and plugins are now rolling out in beta. Until now, both features were limited to a small group of people who had joined a waitlist. Over the coming week, every subscriber to ChatGPT Plus, the paid plan, should see a new panel in settings that lets them switch the features on.

That matters because the standard ChatGPT works only from what it learned during training. It cannot look up today's news, check a live price or act inside another service. Browsing and plugins are OpenAI's first broad attempt to connect ChatGPT to the outside world for a large number of users.

What OpenAI announced

The release note describes two new options, each presented as a separate version of ChatGPT that you choose before you start a chat.

OpenAI calls both features experimental and warns that they may change while they are being developed. Free accounts are not part of this step.

The plugins option comes with a Plugin Store, a catalog inside ChatGPT where you browse, install and enable plugins made by outside companies. When OpenAI first introduced plugins in March, it named a dozen early partners, including Expedia, Instacart, KAYAK, OpenTable, Wolfram and Zapier.

From alpha to beta

The rollout follows a three-step process that OpenAI has just explained in a help article.

1. Alpha. A small group tests a new feature and sends feedback. Browsing and plugins have been in this phase since March, for selected users and developers from the waitlist.
2. Beta. The feature opens to ChatGPT Plus subscribers who choose to try it. This is the step that began yesterday.
3. General availability. If the feature meets OpenAI's quality standards after beta testing, it opens to all ChatGPT users.

The beta step widens the audience a great deal while keeping it voluntary: nothing changes for a Plus subscriber until they switch a feature on. In return, OpenAI gets a much larger body of real-world use to study before any decision about free users.

How browsing and plugins work

Both features rest on the same idea. The language model does not only write text; it can decide that a question needs outside help, call a tool, read what comes back, and then write its answer.

For browsing, OpenAI explained in March that the tool uses Microsoft's Bing search API, a service that returns search results to software rather than to a person. The browser can only read pages, not fill in forms, and ChatGPT shows which sites it visited so you can check them.

A plugin works like a menu that the company behind it hands to ChatGPT. The menu, written in a standard format called an OpenAPI specification, lists what the service can do and how to ask for it. ChatGPT reads that description and decides when one of those actions fits your request. If you have a recipe plugin enabled and ask for a dinner idea with what is in your fridge, ChatGPT can call the plugin instead of inventing a recipe from memory.

Here is the kind of request each mode handles well:

Using web browsing: What did the major AI companies announce this week? List each announcement with the date and a link to the page you used.

Using a plugin: I'm in Chicago next Saturday. Find three restaurants with a table for four around 7 p.m. and tell me which one is closest to the Art Institute.

The first asks for fresh facts with links you can verify. The second needs a booking service, which only a plugin can reach.

Why it matters

ChatGPT's knowledge has a cutoff date, which makes it weak on anything recent. Browsing gives it a way around that limit, with sources you can open. Plugins go further, turning ChatGPT from a writing partner into something that can work with other services.

There are open questions. OpenAI said in March that testing found risks such as prompt injection, where text on a web page or in a tool's reply tries to give the model new orders, and that it has added safeguards. Both features are labeled beta, so expect slower answers, occasional errors and changes over the coming weeks.

How do you turn on browsing and plugins, and what should you watch for?

Once the beta panel has reached your account, click Profile & Settings, choose Beta features, and toggle on the features you want. To use plugins, start a new chat, pick Plugins in the model switcher at the top, then open the dropdown and choose Plugin Store to install and enable the ones you want. If you do not see the panel yet, wait: OpenAI says the rollout takes about a week.

Watch three things. First, check the sources: browsing lists the pages it visited, and those pages, not ChatGPT's summary, are what count. Second, be careful with plugins that touch your accounts or money; read what a plugin says it does before enabling it, and confirm anything important on the service itself. Third, remember that these are experiments. An answer that looks finished may still contain a mistake, so treat browsing and plugins as faster ways to gather information, and keep the final check in your own hands.