Barely arrived, ChatGPT already benefits from a major evolution. Thanks to extensions (plug-ins), the revolutionary chatbot can now access the Internet and use a host of online services. Enough to extend its possibilities to infinity…

Barely arrived, ChatGPT already benefits from a major evolution. Thanks to extensions (plug-ins), the revolutionary chatbot can now access the Internet and use a host of online services. Enough to extend its possibilities to infinity…

ChatGPT continues to evolve at a crazy pace! Just over a week before the release of GPT-4, a version of the language model that powers the more reliable and accurate chatbot, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence is taking a real leap forward with the arrival of plug-ins. -in. Until now, the AI ​​was restricted by its training data, which stopped in 2021, the tool being therefore unable to provide a correct answer on subsequent elements, in particular in relation to current events. Above all, the chatbot was until then disconnected from the Internet, which prevented it from searching for information on the Web or using online services to feed its answers.

These limitations will soon be lifted thanks to the arrival of plug-ins, software extensions allowing new functions to be added to the AI ​​– like those that have existed for years in many applications such as Photoshop, Chrome or Firefox. “Plugins” that will considerably increase the possibilities of the chatbot. Starting with real-time Internet access! As OpenAI announced on his site, ChatGPT can surf the web through a plug-in – an experimental model still in alpha – which dramatically increases the amount of content the AI ​​can use to answer a query. But this is not the only extension available: OpenAI has also forged partnerships with a few handpicked players to develop innovative services. The openness to extensions is in fact a major advance that could transform ChatGPT into a kind of multifunction assistant. Certainly, for now, the number of plug-ins accepted is very limited. Voluntarily. Because OpenAI is advancing with caution on this sensitive terrain, which also opens the way to many abuses…

ChatGPT and the Internet: for better or for worse

The most important extension is undoubtedly the one that provides access to the Internet, which allows retrieving content from the web using the Bing search API and displaying all the sites visited by ChatGPT to formulate its answer. In this way, the user is free to go directly to the sources to verify the information himself. In the example provided by OpenAI, the Internet user asks the AI ​​for information on the winners of the 2023 Oscars. He therefore goes to sites like CNN and ABC News, which he sites in sources, to provide his answer – he mentions for example the film Everything Everywhere All At Oncea film that has won numerous awards.

OpenAI also integrates plug-ins for Expedia, FiscalNote, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna Shopping, Milo Family AI, OpenTable, Shop, Speak, Wolfram, and Zapier businesses, allowing it to act as an assistant and support instructions, which may then affect the services in question. You can book a table at a restaurant (OpenTable), shop online at local stores (Instacart), buy a plane ticket (Expedia), book a hotel, have a product delivered, etc. These plug-ins are intended to help “users in a whole host of new use cases“.

Thus, the OpenTable plugin allows the chatbot to search for restaurant reservations, while the user can ask it via the Instacart plugin for the ingredients for a vegetarian recipe and order them at the local grocery store. In this case, ChatGPT provides the list of ingredients, fills the shopping cart and generates a link for the user to complete the payment on the merchant site, all in seconds.

Another example: combined together, the Expedia and Kayak plug-ins make it possible to organize a trip by finding flights on the right dates and in the right price range, and to book accommodation, according to the desired conditions and budget. Similarly, Zapier’s module connects AI to services like Google Sheets, Trello, and Gmail to trigger a range of tasks. In theory, this addition is beneficial both for businesses, which can attract a larger customer base, and for OpenAI, which fetches real-time data from third-party services to make its responses more accurate.

The Code interpreter plug-in, also in alpha, is able to use the Python language in a secure environment, with storage space. It allows uploading files to ChatGPT and downloading the results. Thus, if the user asks a question requiring calculations, ChatGPT opens a sandbox-like execution environment, with a firewall and ephemeral disk space. He can then code a software specially dedicated to carrying out the task and then execute the code to complete it. If the user provides him with data, he can perform the necessary operations and then give the result in the desired format (graph, presentation, etc.). According to OpenAI, this would be particularly useful for solving mathematical problems, analyzing and visualizing data or converting files from one format to another.

Plug-in for ChatGPT: extensions under control

OpenAI invites developers who wish to create new extensions to consult the documentation to submit their applications to a waiting list. For the moment, only a very limited number can access the plug-ins. The deployment will then be done step by step – the company’s timetable is still unknown. This one does not wish to rush and counts “gradually roll out access on a larger scale as we learn more (for plugin developers, ChatGPT users and, after an alpha period, API users who want to integrate plugins in in their products).”

But while connecting AI with external tools offers incredible possibilities, the technology must be developed with extreme care. Indeed, incorporating plugins into a generative AI is extremely risky as it can cause significant security issues, such as fraud, abuse and hacks – especially since ChatGPT recently made public different chat histories… Letting the chatbot act on behalf of the Internet user seems tricky to say the least, especially when we see that this type of AI sometimes goes completely into a spin when it is simply a question of asking for information and that it is already used for cyberattacks… Still, developers and users alike can now join the ChatGPT plugin waiting list…at their own risk.