OpenAI, the company behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT, is said to halt its search engine feature. The feature, based on Microsoft search engine Bing dubbed Browse, has been disabled temporarily as it started providing content to the user even beyond the paywall.
On Tuesday, June 4, 2023, OpenAI took to Twitter and announced to temporarily discontinue Browse services until the recently rose issue gets resolved.
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.
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) July 4, 2023
Browse facility on the platform is available only for paid subscribers of ChatGPT plus. Though the feature is in its beta phase and available for paid users, the issues were raised over social media platform, Reddit.
A Reddit post from June end reportedly surfaced on the platform consisting of a screenshot of a session over ChatGPT’s Browse. The r/ChatGPT subReddit post where it provided the link of a premium article from The Atlantic for the prompt in response to a command.
The recent action of OpenAI to shut down the feature is likely to come in for fixing the loophole.
OpenAI gave credit to plus subscribers for bringing the issue with the browsing feature to attention as helping the company with the testing.
“This is why we started with a beta—have received extremely valuable feedback, learned a lot, & will bring it back soon,” it added.
OpenAI Didn’t Look Back After ChatGPT
The paid subscription of ChatGPT provides subscribers access to more features than those available to free users. In addition to Browse with Bing, it brings GPT-4, a more powerful chatbot than ChatGPT, and the GPT-4 Plugin Store.
OpenAI brought the storm with the launch of its large language model (LLM) based artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT. Following the launch in November 2022, the user base for the chatbot rose to a whopping 1 Million within a short span of 5 days. It was the fastest chasing of million users for any product or service, while Netflix took 3.5 years and Instagram 2.5 months to reach the milestone. Current statistics shows the user base of AI chatbot hit 100 Million with 1.8 Billion monthly visits.
American tech giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has entered the space and poured more than $13 Billion worth of investment into OpenAI. Following the investment, the cutting edge capabilities of ChatGPT were brought to Bing after integration.
Taking things further, OpenAI launched a more strong chatbot with added browsing abilities, GPT-4 in May 2023.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/07/05/openai-temporarily-switches-off-premium-feature-chatgpt-browse/