ChatGPT is no more constrained by 2021 knowledge cutoff; OpenAI lets it browse the web for current information

OpenAI announced that ChatGPT would be able to browse the internet to give users “current and authoritative information”.

OpenAI announced on Wednesday that ChatGPT would be able to browse the internet in order to give users “current and authoritative information” and links to sources, effectively ending the knowledge cutoff which restricted the chatbot to information dated prior to September 2021.

The AI startup said it had received useful feedback from the original browsing launch in May, and that the chatbot would follow robots.txt and identify user agents for better interaction with websites.

ChatGPT’s Bing-powered browsing feature was introduced earlier this year to paid users but was taken down due to paywall jumping concerns, Reuters reported.

A screen recording shared by OpenAI showed how a search for commuter bikes, for example, would prompt ChatGPT to browse relevant biking sites and read their content, in order to provide a concise answer with a link.

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The new browsing upgrade will be rolled out to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users first while others will get it “soon”. Users will need to enable ‘Browse with Bing’ under GPT-4 to use the latest feature.

“Browsing is particularly useful for tasks that would require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation,” said OpenAI in its X (formerly Twitter) post.