Skip to main content

These 2 new ChatGPT features are about to change everything

ChatGPT Plus subscribers will soon get a much more powerful version of OpenAI’s large language model, allowing it to access plugins and the internet. This will dramatically expand the capabilities and usefulness of the world’s most famous chatbot.

OpenAI shared the news via a tweet linking to the latest ChatGPT release notes. Web browsing and plugin access will begin as an optional beta feature that can be enabled in settings.

Recommended Videos

We’re rolling out web browsing and Plugins to all ChatGPT Plus users over the next week! Moving from alpha to beta, they allow ChatGPT to access the internet and to use 70+ third-party plugins. https://t.co/t4syFUj0fL pic.twitter.com/Mw9FMpKq91

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 12, 2023

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The beta panel started rolling out along with the new ChatGPT features last Friday. If you’re a ChatGPT Plus subscriber but don’t see a beta panel in settings, you won’t be able to access browsing or plugins yet.

A few early-access users got to test ChatGPT plugins in a limited form in late March. Since then, the number of available plugins has grown dramatically from a meager 11 to over 70.

Plugins provide access to various websites and services, allowing ChatGPT to perform more complicated tasks and access specialized databases. Examples include checking the weather, booking a flight, finding deals, and looking up recipes. The web browsing feature allows ChatGPT to bring in current information, similar to how Bing Chat and Google Bard work.

YouTube channel App Of The Day gives a good overview of what ChatGPT plugins look like and how they work.

ChatGPT Plugins and Web Browsing - Everything You Need to Know

After you’ve enabled plugins, ChatGPT knows when to use them, so you only need to specifically name a service if you have more than one that can help with the same task. The real power comes in combining multiple plugins, with ChatGPT orchestrating everything.

Plugins let ChatGPT do more than type messages; it can perform tasks, a bit like AutoGPT but without the hassle. ChatGPT will also be able to read everything online and access specialized knowledge bases that aren’t indexed and searchable without visiting a particular website.

Plugins and internet access will change everything and greatly expand how people use ChatGPT.

Alan Truly
Alan Truly is a Writer at Digital Trends, covering computers, laptops, hardware, software, and accessories that stand out as…
Stargate Project: everything you need to know about OpenAI’s $500 billion gamble
Sam Altman at the OpenAI developer conference.

Shortly after taking office, Donald Trump touted a new private business venture, led by OpenAI, which plans to spend half a trillion dollars over the next four years building the data centers and power production plants that America's growing AI industry relies on.

“It’s big money and high-quality people,” Trump said during a January 21st press announcement alongside Sam Altman from OpenAI, Larry Ellison from Oracle, and Masayoshi Son from SoftBank. The project is “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his administration, Trump continued, despite the federal government not actually having anything to do with the project.

Read more
DeepSeek’s censorship is a warning shot — and a wake-up call
Homepage of DeepSeek's mobile AI app.

The AI industry is abuzz with chatter about a new large language model that is taking the fight to the industry’s top dogs like OpenAI and Anthropic. But not without its generous share of surprises. The name is DeepSeek.

It comes out of China. It is open source. Most importantly, it is said to have been developed at a fraction of the cost compared to what current industry leaders from OpenAI, Meta, and Google have burned.

Read more
Chatbots are going to Washington with ChatGPT Gov
glasses and chatgpt

In an X post Monday commenting on DeepSeek's sudden success, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman promised to "pull up some releases" and it appears he has done so. OpenAI unveiled its newest product on Tuesday, a "tailored version of ChatGPT designed to provide U.S. government agencies with an additional way to access OpenAI’s frontier models," per the announcement post. ChatGPT Gov will reportedly offer even tighter data security measures than ChatGPT Enterprise, but how will it handle the hallucinations that plague the company's other models?

According to OpenAI, more than 90,000 federal, state, and local government employees across 3,500 agencies have queried ChatGPT more than 18 million times since the start of 2024. The new platform will enable government agencies to enter “non-public, sensitive information” into ChatGPT while it runs within their secure hosting environments -- specifically, the Microsoft Azure commercial cloud or Azure Government community cloud -- and cybersecurity frameworks like IL5 or CJIS. This enables each agency to "manage their own security, privacy and compliance requirements,” Felipe Millon, Government Sales lead at OpenAI told reporters on the press call Tuesday.

Read more