The creator of the generative AI platform ChatGPT, OpenAI, announced Wednesday that the software can now fetch data directly from the internet and gather up-to-date information in real-time.
Until now, ChatGPT’s responses to user questions were based on a massive database that did not include data after August 2021.
“ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources,” OpenAI said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “It is no longer limited to data before September 2021.”
It also said that the latest feature would allow sites to control how ChatGPT interacts with them.
OpenAI sent the upgrade to paying customers in June, but it was halted after users discovered how to circumvent paywalls on internet content.
The “Browse with Bing” option is also reserved for paying ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers, but OpenAI stated it would soon be available to all users.
Microsoft’s Bing Chat, a fusion of GPT-4, the language model used to construct ChatGPT, with its internet search engine, is already available, as is Google’s conversational robot Bard.
ChatGPT will provide direct sources with its responses, which will no longer be relied on the program’s publisher’s single database.