ChatGPT Plus Has Two Huge New Features You Can Try Right Now
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has started what looks like an AI revolution that won’t slow down anytime soon. While other big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have entered the AI arena, the conversation is still about ChatGPT. And that probably won’t change after this week, as OpenAI just rolled out two huge features for ChatGPT Plus that you can try out right now.
On Friday, May 12th, OpenAI announced that they will be providing plugin access and internet access to ChatGPT Plus subscribers next week. These two features were previously in alpha testing, and while not yet officially released, they are moving into a more open beta testing period for all Plus users:
What happened to ChatGPT Plus plugins and internet access?
To say that these two ChatGPT Plus features have been a game changer would be an understatement. First, let’s look at Internet access. Previously, ChatGPT was limited to a closed knowledge base (a huge knowledge base, mind you). He knew a lot and could provide you with information on a range of topics, but he was still limited by the scope of this data set. If you asked him a question about a topic that took place in 2022 or later, he didn’t have any data to work with. But now that’s changing: OpenAI gives ChatGPT Plus access to the internet, opening up its capabilities exponentially. Like Google’s Bard or Microsoft’s Bing Chat, ChatGPT can now surf the web and pull data from the Internet when needed. This means you can be specific with your questions: you can ask ChatGPT about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Elon Musk’s last words , and the AI doesn’t have to go through details from 2021 and earlier. But it won’t necessarily prevent hallucinations , so you still need to be careful about the results.
Let’s talk about plugins next. You can think of ChatGPT plugins like browser extensions for Chrome: when you add a plugin, you add third-party functionality to your AI agent, connecting the AI to various external applications.
For example, you can add an OpenTable plugin to ask ChatGPT to find a restaurant that matches your party’s size and interests, with availability at a specific time. The Wolfram plugin can answer questions about math, calculations, and data with diagrams directly in the ChatGPT interface. You can plan your trip including hotel reservations and travel recommendations using the Kayak plugin.
One particularly powerful plugin is Prompt Perfect, which rewrites your prompts for you so that ChatGPT produces the best possible result. Perfect hint will take a simple one sentence hint and fill it with details that ChatGPT can work with. Of course, it’s still better to be as specific as possible with your hints, even when using Prompt Perfect, so that the plugin has more options to work with.
If you’re interested in getting started with ChatGPT plugins, Beebom has a list of 15 of their favorite plugins to try .
While OpenAI states that they currently have over 70 ChatGPT plugins ready to go, you can only activate three at a time. If you want to use more, you will need to replace your current plugins with the ones you want to use next time. This sounds a bit restrictive, but it’s probably for the best since ChatGPT automatically connects to these plugins based on your requests. You don’t want too much or you risk ChatGPT accessing plugins you don’t care about.
You can watch the Howfinity video to get started with the ChatGPT plugins.
How much do new ChatGPT features cost?
The elephant in the room, however, is that none of these powerful new features are free. ChatGPT plus costs $20/month , which is quite expensive in terms of subscription. In contrast, the version of ChatGPT that most of us have used is completely free, so it might seem like gaining access to features like plugins and internet access, as well as existing perks like GPT-4, might seem like a pretty quick step. (The free version of ChatGPT only uses GPT-3.5.)
However, the price hasn’t changed since those new features were removed: it’s the same $20 a month as last week, and you can now connect to the internet and connect third-party apps via plugins. If you’re willing to spend money, there’s a lot you can do with ChatGPT Plus now.
You may also need to enable beta features to see these options at all. To do this, open ChatGPT, click Profile & Settings, select Beta Features, then enable the desired options.
[ Digital Trends ]