Recently, OpenAI’s ChatGPT debuted its Browse with Bing feature. While people across the world depend on this AI chatbot for their work, be it writing a research paper or finding the perfect recipe for dinner, the data available with ChatGPT was up till September 2021. If anyone tried browsing for things that happened or existed post this date, ChatGPT would produce inadvertent responses. To tackle this issue, ChatGPT rolled out its Browse with Bing feature. This feature was, however, exclusively available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. Now, the company has decided to pull the plug on this feature.
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Paywalls are frequently used to entice consumers to subscribe to a website. Access to the published information is restricted to anyone without the site’s subscription. However, some users have discovered a new technique to get around these paywalls and access the material without needing to sign up for a subscription. This was very well observed in the r/ChatGPT group on Reddit as the users discussed ways to bypass the paywalls.
The users continued to discuss other ways and strategies in the thread that they employ to get around these paywalls. And as demonstrated on Reddit, by instructing ChatGPT to print the text of an article that was protected by a paywall, a number of users were able to get around these paywalls. To prevent this from happening again, it is not clear when OpenAI will restore the capability or what platform configuration adjustments they will make.
Previously, Microsoft promised to bring out a Bing and ChatGPT integration in order to elevate the user experience of the AI tool. It announced the integration at the annual developer conference for developers. Microsoft further launched Bing Chat in February, which was based on an unreleased version of GPT-4. OpenAI had warned the tech company about the negative implications this could have, but Microsoft still went ahead with its release. Later, the user found that the chatbot was generating unpredictable responses and could also insult, lie, sulk, gaslight the users, and even go as far as claiming to know its enemies. Microsoft worked on it to the point where the user could have a continuous conversation with it.
This feature of Browse with Bing lets users surf the web, but this is only possible through Bing. Before such an inclusion, ChatGPT depended on OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. This limited the chatbot’s capabilities, and this was because the data that the bot could access was till September 2021.
But even after such an inclusion, there were issues faced by the chatbot. One of the most prominent issues was when the AI bot was asked to access the full text in a URL, or perhaps a pdf in the URL. The chatbot would produce error messages or half-fed responses. Through its help page, OpenAI said, “We have learned that the ChatGPT Browse beta can occasionally display content in ways we don’t want. For example, if a user specifically asks for a URL’s full text, it might inadvertently fulfil this request.”
Also Read: OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now “browse” the web, but there’s a catch
Taking the malfunctions into consideration, OpenAI has taken the decision to disable Browse with Bing as of July 3, 2023. It took this cautionary step while the company was engaged in fixing the issues to uphold accuracy and do the right thing. OpenAI expressed, “We are working to bring the beta back as quickly as possible, and appreciate your understanding!”
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