AI powerhouse OpenAI has announced that it is temporarily halting ChatGPT’s Browse with Bing plugin. This is because the company found that many users were accessing paywalled articles using it. In a tweet on its official handle, OpenAI said that ChatGPT’s Browse beta occasionally displayed content in ways that it was not intended to. In case a user asked for the full text of a specific URL, the chatbot would inadvertently provide a response. The Sam Altman-led company said that it was disabling the browse function momentarily. The company said that it disabled the feature adding that it was working towards fixing the issue and intends to ‘do right by content owners’. “We've learned that ChatGPT's "Browse" beta can occasionally display content in ways we don't want, e.g. if a user specifically asks for a URL's full text, it may inadvertently fulfill this request. We are disabling Browse while we fix this—want to do right by content owners,” read the tweet by OpenAI. With the web browsing being temporarily disabled, ChatGPT will no longer be able to display information after September 2021, its initial training cut-off date. Meanwhile, in a subsequent tweet, the company expressed its gratitude to ChatGPT Plus subscribers who have been helping the company test the browsing feature. The company said that with the beta testing, it received ‘extremely valuable feedback, learned a lot, & will bring it back soon.’ “Very grateful to the ChatGPT Plus subscribers who have been helping us test the browsing feature. This is why we started with a beta—have received extremely valuable feedback, learned a lot, & will bring it back soon,” read the tweet. Although Browse with Bing is now inactive, several other GPT-4 plugins let users ask ChatGPT to read URLs, PDFs, and summarise YouTube videos. Those subscribed to ChatGPT Plus gain access to features such as access to GPT-4, Browse with Bing, and GPT-4 Plugin store, etc. These features are not available to free users. The Browse feature with Bing was introduced to ChatGPT in February by Microsoft, which invested over $ 13 billion in the AI start-up. The GPT-4 iteration was launched in March this year, while the ability to browse the Internet was added to it in May.
