In March, OpenAI initiated the development of plugins as “eyes and ears” for ChatGPT, aiming to enhance its functionality as a versatile tool capable of assisting users with a wide range of tasks.
Initially, these plugins were accessible to a limited group of users in an alpha testing phase. However, OpenAI announced on Friday last week that it has released over 70 third-party plugins that are now rolling out to ChatGPT Plus users. This update marks a significant expansion of capabilities for ChatGPT users.
The AI company wrote:
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.
Upon subscribing to ChatGPT Plus, plugins will automatically be activated within settings under “Beta Features.” This subscription service, priced at $20 per month, grants users access to OpenAI’s advanced ChatGPT-4 model, which is a notable improvement over ChatGPT-3, although it still has its imperfections. In addition, ChatGPT Plus subscribers gain exclusive access to over 70 third-party plugins.
The new plugins offer a diverse range of functionalities, including the ability to parse website content, visualize and analyze data, and even assist in learning foreign languages. While users have the freedom to install as many plugins as they desire, they can only utilize up to three at a time.
These plugins cater to various industries and business ventures, covering several areas such as shopping, real estate, stocks, travel, and food. As an example, the “ndricks Sports” plugin aggregates relevant sports news and information for users.
Among the available plugins, “AskYourPDF” and “ChatWithPDF” enable users to input a URL of a PDF document for ChatGPT to analyze. However, these plugins exhibit selectivity when it comes to accepting specific URLs and do not support local files from users’ computers.
It is worth noting that ChatGPT-plugins are still in the beta phase, and it shows its current performance. For instance, the “ndricks Sports” plugin provides accurate information, but the reference links don’t always take you back to the website ChatGPT took its information from. Also, some PDF plugins don’t work as intended at times.
Regardless, this is still a major upgrade to ChatGPT’s capabilities and a much-needed one in the wake of rival companies enhancing their own AI tools such as Google’s Bard AI.
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