ChatGPT, an AI chatbot created by OpenAI, is changing the world of chatbots by introducing a new App Store-inspired approach. This approach is opening up a vast universe of possibilities for both developers and users.
In recent times, there has been a lot of buzz around conversational agents and AI. Following the launch of GPT-4 in ChatGPT, OpenAI announced new third party plugins for ChatGPT. While some may view this as a minor development, it is actually a significant and promising development in the field.
ChatGPT’s Third-Party Plugin Store: Revolutionizing the World of AI Chatbots
These plugins provide access to third party knowledge sources, tools, and databases, including the web. They are available in alpha for ChatGPT waitlisted users and developers. And OpenAI plans to prioritize a small number of ChatGPT Plus developers and subscribers before rolling out wider access.
The most intriguing plugin is the web browsing plugin. Which allows ChatGPT to pull data from the web to answer various questions posed to it.
Without this plugin, ChatGPT’s knowledge has limitations to informabtion prior to around September 2021. However, with this plugin, ChatGPT can now fetch content from the web using the Bing Search API and display the websites it visited to craft an answer, citing its sources in ChatGPT answers. This is similar to the experience one can have on Microsoft’s Bing (based on GPT-4). But also on the future Google Bard.
While a chatbot with access to the web comes with risks, it also gives search engines a lot of power over the data that will feed the web connected language models. Therefore, it is likely that a specific set of rules will have to be established for plugin developers. Imposing certain restrictions and limits on them. In order to ensure the security and quality of the plugins offered on the ChatGPT platform.
OpenAI encourages developers to consult its documentation and API to design plugins for ChatGPT. Several partners such as Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, OpenTable, and Zapier have already created their own plugins.