ChatGPT has released new features with more useful stuff – here's what you can do with it

ChatGPT is getting better again—at least if you pay US$20 a month for access to the AI chatbot's Plus edition. While free users cannot use them for the time being, two key new additions promise to significantly improve ChatGPT's new feature capabilities. Here's how to utilize ChatGPT Plus's online access and plugins.

To begin, some definitions. Instead of relying purely on its training data, ChatGPT can search things up on the internet and contribute the information it discovers to its replies. Second, new features on ChatGPT now support hundreds of plugins, which is similar to when browser extensions first became available, or when the iPhone first received third-party apps—it implies ChatGPT interaction with a wide range of sites and services (like Kayak and OpenTable, for example).

With online access and plugin support, ChatGPT allows you to accomplish more than ever before. It could even be enough to persuade you to pay the monthly membership fee—but first, let us demonstrate how these upgrades operate. To begin, you must activate these beta capabilities within ChatGPT by clicking your account email address (bottom left), followed by Settings and Beta features.

It's important to remember that everything is moving at breakneck speed. ChatGPT will soon include Bing for both Plus and free users, albeit it appears that this will be accomplished through the use of a plugin. This is still in the works, but here's how web access and plugins work on ChatGPT Plus at the time of writing.

 How to Search the Web with ChatGPT?

Launch ChatGPT Plus in your web browser and make sure GPT-4 is chosen from the choices at the top. When you switch to GPT-4, you'll be presented with three more options: Default, Plugins, and Browsing. Allow ChatGPT to roam freely on the internet by enabling the latter.

It should be noted, however, that you do not always wish to utilize the web-enabled version of GPT-4. It can take some time for the chatbot to refer back to the internet, which is wasted time if you're only seeking some creative prompts or need to digest some material. Save the Browsing option for when you need current information.

Once you've chosen the mode, write your question as usual, then hit the submit button on the right or press Enter. ChatGPT then searches the web for answers for you—you'll notice a "Browsing the web" label in the response area as the chatbot does so.

This label will change to reflect whatever ChatGPT is doing, such as clicking on a link or following a link—more sophisticated inquiries may take longer to finish when online references are necessary. Click the little arrow next to the green label to view all of the actions that ChatGPT has taken.

ChatGPT should ultimately reply by providing a "Finished browsing" badge. You can expand this label to see which websites the chatbot visited on its journey—you'll also note that factual information is accompanied by citations, a la Wikipedia, and you can click on any of them to see the source. If you want ChatGPT to consult a specific site, enter the URL in the popup.