ChatGPT Can Now Browse the Internet For You: What This Means for Business Owners in 2023 and 2024

Perhaps the biggest update to ChatGPT since its release in November of 2022 was recently announced: It can now browse the Internet for you.

As many ChatGPT users know, the chatbot was previously only approved to use data from September 2021 and before.

This major upgrade to ChatGPT’s services is currently only available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. However, it will soon be available to all users of the platform, paying subscribers and free trialers alike.

However, there are some things you need to be aware of before using this beefed-up version of the ever-popular chatbot.

For one, it will be conducting its searches on Microsoft Bing instead of Google.

There is a reason for this. Microsoft is the majority investor in OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT.

So, ChatGPT Can Now Browse the Internet; When Will This Update Take Place?

As of this blog’s writing, OpenAI has not specified when exactly this will take place.

However, given its recent September 2023 announcement of ChatGPT integrating the DALL-E platform sometime in October 2023, it may be safe to guess that at least a month or two may be in place before it is rolled out. Hopefully users will be able to use this exciting new feature by the platform’s one-year anniversary of its debut in November.

What Is the Significance of the Update?

Many people talked about ChatGPT’s limited research abilities when it debuted late last fall.

For many content creators hoping to leverage ChatGPT, this posed a significant roadblock to writing content that was up to date.

Now, users will be able to integrate very recent information, such as news stories, into generated content.

This is the next step in what is proving to be a series of actions OpenAI is taking to make ChatGPT truly “market ready”.

How Will This Affect ChatGPT Users?

The impact for users will largely be positive. You will now be able to write content that is up to date.

Users that were lamenting having to pull in new information to freshen up the ChatGPT content, will now be able to celebrate getting more accurate info into their blogs and emails and whatever else they are generating with this chatbot.

Caveats for Using ChatGPT After This New Addition

Yes, we mention “more accurate info” above, but the truth is that it will not always be 100% accurate. Really, it is just the case that ChatGPT’s accuracy has likely increased thanks to this update.

The unhappy alternative is that it will hallucinate more now that it has a much higher level of content to sift through and try to make sense of.

There are also some pretty uncomfortable questions that this chatbot’s web-surfing also raises. For instance, how can we be sure that it can sift through the constant flow of contradictory information and even misinformation that the Internet is known to be a hot wellspring of? Surely OpenAI will have some quelling PR-speak to offer in this regard, but we will have to wait to see the new-and-“improved” gen A.I. bot in action to see whether it is actually elite at sifting through misinformation or not.

Until then, beware of the pitfalls of this feature.

What to Expect Next from Generative A.I.

As mentioned above, OpenAI seems to be heading toward making its conversational computing platform into a fully functional generative A.I. platform that can do many tasks. Think of it like the generative A.I. version of the Jetsons’ robot maid, with a veritable collection of figurative chore-conquering arms at your beck and call for content creation, be it text or image.

As generative A.I. begins to strengthen over the coming years, something major you can expect is a new level of sophistication in generative video A.I. platforms.

In fact, there are already video-generating A.I. platforms that are in the market. But it is significant that the most mainstream center-of-attention A.I. platforms like Google Bard and ChatGPT do not yet offer this. This is a sign that automated video generation is perhaps not quite where it needs to be for mass-market success.

Once OpenAI announces that ChatGPT can make videos for you, then you can be assured that we have reached the next level of generative A.I.

Summary

Ultimately, ChatGPT can now browse the internet, but users need to be aware of the potential pitfalls of putting too much trust into this upgrade’s potential.

Don’t take ChatGPT’s answers for granted, even if it is now “up to date”. This automated chatbot is still prone to hallucination and will always need human fact-checkers.

This update is just the latest in a recent string of big changes made to this chatbot. Another notable addition is the offer to implement the DALL-E plug-in to the platform for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, enabling automated image generation.