How to use ChatGPT web browsing

Now that OpenAI have made public a new array of plugins and features – here’s how to use ChatGPT’s web browsing plugin, which changes everything.

The update quietly rolled out on May 15th, and since then users have quietly been discovering the new beta features on the ChatGPT Plus platform.

Note: At the time of writing, the ChatGPT web browsing plugin is temporarily disabled whilst OpenAI fix an issue to ensure content creators privacy.

While the news that ChatGPT plugins would have access to the internet isn’t particularly new – they were particularly limited in scope. However, the standalone web browsing beta plugin is going to open up new possibilities of AI use – both good and bad.

ChatGPT web browsing: Here’s how to use it

There’s a few major things that you’re going to need to do here. We’ve detailed them in a list below:

• Sign up for ChatGPT Plus (Note: Not all Plus users have access yet)
• Open menu (Three dots icon in bottom left of screen)
• Click Settings
• Click Beta features
• Enable Web browsing
• Start New Chat in ChatGPT
• Choose GPT-4 at the top of the screen
• Click drop-down menu to the right and enable Browsing (Beta)

Once you’ve started a new chat, you’re going to be able to paste links into ChatGPT, though there are also other ways to browse the internet with ChatGPT.

What can you do with ChatGPT web browsing?

Here’s a few of the things you can do with ChatGPT web browsing:

We asked ChatGPT to summarize this web-page and repeat to us the key information. However, there were a few minor issues. We noticed that ChatGPT makes some assumptions here to fill in the gaps. The original page mentions ‘steerability’ and how it has improved, though there isn’t a claim that this concept was introduced in GPT-4.

Once ChatGPT receives a link to read through – it opens this drop-down menu where you can watch the chatbots activities and journey through the site. There are quite a few re-occurring “Click failed” error messages, and we have yet to figure out the cause of this issue.

Alternatively, you can also ask ChatGPT to browse the internet for you, without directly inputting a link. This feature is going to be monumental, and with recent changes to Google, especially integrating an AI generative experience into Search, the implementation of ChatGPT web browsing will keep reasserting OpenAI as competitive with other AI companies.

This only scratches the surface of what ChatGPT web browsing can achieve, and we’re sure to see a flurry of new methods, tricks, hacks, and alike announce themselves.

ChatGPT web browsing ideas

If you’re anyone with a digitally-inclined mind – ChatGPT web browsing should sound enticing to you. Here’s a few things that you can try to get the most out of AI in the modern day:

• Summarise long articles
• Research and ideas for online blog content
• Networking
• Education
• Content ideation

These are only but a few of the things that ChatGPT’s internet access is going to make possible – so we’re going to be keeping our eyes out for the latest updates on everything ChatGPT web browsing related. In the meantime, you might be interested in how GPT-4 image input and Google Bard image input are doing.