- ChatGPT may, in some cases, access the Internet to respond to users
- This change is currently limited
- Connecting this AI to the web is not without raising certain technical and legal questions.
Since its launch, ChatGPT’s database has no information about events or people after September 2021. For some recent topics, the language model is therefore unable to respond in a conversation. But things are changing. OpenAI has just announced that its AI could, in some cases, connect to the Internet.
The company decides to launch slowly, since this feature will initially only be open to certain developers and subscribers of its premium ChatGPT Plus offer. It is only a little later that this service will be deployed on a larger scale.
ChatGPT in the footsteps of Bing Chat
Specifically, ChatGPT will use the Bing search engine API, currently at work on Bing Chat, to answer factual questions about recent news. The latter has an advantage, it provides the user with the web sources he used to formulate his answer.
It is in any case a crucial step which is announced here, and from the beginning, certain observers underline the difficulties of a connection of the language model to Internet. He is indeed much more likely to make mistakes and cite sources that are not always very convincing.
Others point to potential legal risks, and AI has already been accused of violating certain licenses and copyrights. However, ChatGPT could be tuned so that it would only briefly quote a source without totally looting it.
Aware of the risks, OpenAI admitted that connecting ChatGPT to the webs could cause “increasing the abilities of bad actors who would defraud, deceive, or abuse other people”. However, she wants to be reassuring and promises to have “implemented several protective measures”without further details.
The beginnings of ChatGPT on the Internet promise in any case to be agitated, unless the language model does not benefit from the work of Microsoft which has already suffered the plaster on this file. Indeed, while Bing Chat tended to rave, even argue with users in its early days, it now very quickly cuts short conversations that are a little awkward.
The Redmond firm has also limited the number of requests in the same discussion in order to limit the risk of abuse. If you are interested in this subject, you can always find our dedicated article here.
