[HN Gopher] ChatGPT can now search the web in real time
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       ChatGPT can now search the web in real time
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2023-09-27 20:44 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | It's interesting that OpenAI themselves are not calling this "you
       | can browse again" and also throwing in the "no longer limited by
       | September 2021 cutoff" even though it is January 2022.
       | 
       | Stinks to me like they are pulling a little marketing campaign to
       | lure in new users and the media is happy to oblige to use the
       | same language/phrasing.
       | 
       | For reference, they disabled browsing because you could bypass
       | paywalls with it.
        
         | Someone1234 wrote:
         | The Jan 2022 thing is likely not helpful anyway as it doesn't
         | give higher weight to newer information (i.e. pre-2021 info
         | could be returned even if Jan 2022 info may contradict it).
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | I wish they'd document the cut-off date properly.
         | 
         | It's not strictly January 2022, because I've seen people get
         | answers about the 2022 Superbowl (February 2022) and the Will
         | Smith slap at the Oscars (March 2022) as well.
         | 
         | Though I've been unable to replicate the Oscars one myself.
        
         | samr71 wrote:
         | Paywalls was why they removed that feature?? This is why I hate
         | OpenAI as much as I love them. They deliver miracles, but seem
         | to have a pathological urge to make their product worse.
        
       | koolba wrote:
       | > OpenAI posted today that ChatGPT can once more trawl the web
       | for current information, offering answers taken directly from
       | "current and authoritative" sources, which it cites in its
       | responses.
       | 
       | The list is apparently cited in responses, but is the list of
       | possible sources itself public?
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | I imagine it's everything on the web that's been crawled by
         | Bing and hasn't blocked ChatGPT explicitly in its robots.txt
         | file.
        
           | willsmith72 wrote:
           | have openai's crawlers really paid attention to people's
           | robots.txts?
        
             | simonw wrote:
             | Yes. There's even a project tracking which newspapers are
             | blocking them here: https://palewi.re/docs/news-
             | homepages/openai-gptbot-robotstx...
        
               | input_sh wrote:
               | Oh wow, getting 43.6% of newspapers to do anything
               | collectively over a brief period of time is... definitely
               | not an easy achievement.
        
             | theshackleford wrote:
             | It would appear so from the significant network of sites I
             | am responsible for that have put such robots.txt changes
             | into place.
        
       | danShumway wrote:
       | Did something change about their security model that I've missed?
       | Won't this be just as vulnerable to the same poisoned website
       | attacks that made them turn it off in the first place?
       | 
       |  _Edit: Ah, never mind, I 'm remembering wrong. They turned it
       | off previously because it could bypass paywalls, not because of
       | security concerns. So the answer is likely, "yes it is still just
       | as insecure as ever, but now there are probably some checks to
       | keep it from summarizing paywalled news articles." :shrug:_
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | vinni2 wrote:
       | It seems to retrieve top-1 result from Bing. Doesn't give any
       | options to customize search or provide search constraints. Also
       | failed due to technical or browsing errors a few times. Needs
       | improvement.
        
       | benjamoon wrote:
       | Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37680673
        
       | ilikeitdark wrote:
       | I've been able to do that for over 25 years.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | samspenc wrote:
         | Took me a few seconds to realize this was a reference to
         | Google's 25th 'birthday' :) https://blog.google/inside-
         | google/company-announcements/goog...
        
       | lukasb wrote:
       | edit: enable in settings, log out+in, mouse over "GPT-4" at the
       | top
       | 
       | Hm, is this available in the web app?
        
         | knolan wrote:
         | You enable it in settings then turn it on from the GPT 4 menu
         | like when you enable a plugin.
        
         | eshack94 wrote:
         | Yes.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-27 23:01 UTC)