ChatGPT can finally access the internet in real time, but there’s a catch

ChatGPT has proven itself to be a versatile chatbot, capable of assisting with tasks such as writing, coding, researching, planning vacations, and more. However, it’s had one major limitation since it launched, and now that flaw is finally fixed — for those willing to pay the price. 

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced via an X (formerly Twitter) post that its chatbot is now able to access the internet in real time and provide direct links to its sources. The added functionality will be available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers. 

Also: The 3 biggest AI announcements at Meta Connect: Meta AI, Snoop Dogg, more 

This means that for paying customers, ChatGPT will no longer be limited to information before 2021, opening the floodgates for new capabilities and increasing the reliability of the chatbot. 

ChatGPT can access the internet through Microsoft’s Bing web browser. The announcement of this partnership was initially made at Microsoft Build back in May and rolled out to ChatGPT Plus users. However, after a couple of months, it was removed by OpenAI after users were leveraging the feature to hop paywalls. 

OpenAI shared that since the initial rollout in May, the company received helpful feedback from users that has been incorporated into the new update, including “following robots.txt” and “identifying user agents so sites can control how ChatGPT interacts with them.”

To activate the feature, all ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users have to do is choose “Browse with Bing” from the drop-down under GPT-4.

Also: Meta’s new AI chatbots let you ask celebrities your most burning questions 

A ChatGPT Plus membership costs $20/month; however, for users who require the latest information, the added accuracy and dependability might be worth the investment.

For all other users who are itching to have their hands on this feature, OpenAI says it will expand to all users soon. Until then, Bing Chat is a solid alternative as it is supported by GPT-4, has access to the internet, provides sources, and is free. 

This announcement comes just days after OpenAI announced that ChatGPT could “see, hear, and speak,” referring to it accepting image and voice prompts as well as outputting voice prompts back. 

The new search and response features also are limited to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users and will roll out to users within the next two weeks.