ChatGPT has a game-changer update!

The recent discoveries and releases in AI have made me, a web developer, highly interested in the domain. Before settling on one update, I am hearing about something new! This time, it was about ChatGPT Plugins.

On March 23, OpenAI announced a plugin system for its ChatGPT. Plugins are bits of code that tell ChatGPT how to use an external resource on the internet. These plugins allow ChatGPT to interact with the broader world through the internet. Now it can interact with the real world and data and perform tasks like booking flights, ordering groceries, browsing the web, and more.

Let's take a look at ChatGPT plugins in today's blog.

Why are plugins necessary?

Plugins open new doors to ChatGPT. They give GPT-4 a steroid boost, enabling them to perform more crazy tasks.

Large Language Models(LLMs) have some limitations even though they are incredibly excellent at what they do. LLMs can only learn from their training data and predict results. It can not use information outside its training data and provide accurate data, results, and facts. Hence, sometimes it tends to produce inaccurate outputs, which is termed as "hallucinations" in the field of AI.

Plugins could act as "eyes and ears" for LLMs. This allows LLMs to access information unavailable in their training data. This includes too recent, personal, or specific information to be included in the training data. Plugins could use such information to produce better, highly accurate, precise outcomes.

A deeper look at plugins

OpenAI has partnered with several companies to create ChatGPT plugins. The company also hosts two plugins: a web browser and a code interpreter. It has open-sourced a knowledge base retrieval plugin.

OpenAI plugins

The Web Browser plugin will allow ChatGPT to search the internet for accurate data and facts. Whereas, Code Interpreter is a Python code sandbox. It is helpful while solving mathematical problems, doing data analysis and visualization, and converting file formats.

Furthermore, OpenAI has open-sourced the code for a knowledge base retrieval plugin. Individual users can self-host this tool. It enables access to personal or organizational data to ChatGPT. The plugin leverages OpenAI embeddings and allows developers to choose a vector database for indexing and searching documents. These information sources can be synchronized with the database using webhooks.

Third-party plugins

OpenAI has partnered with 11 companies to create such plugins. Expedia, FiscalNote, Milo, and Zapier are some companies that have already made their plugins.

Users can enable this plugin from chat.openai.com site and prompt accordingly. You don't need to go to new websites or a different window. Everything will occur from the primary chat prompt only.

Create your own plugin

Every ChatGPT plugin has a manifest file, which includes a machine-readable description of the plugin, how to invoke them, and user-facing documentation.

You, as a developer, need to create API endpoints that a language model will call. Then you need to create an OPenAPI specification documenting your API and a manifest file that links to the OpenAPI spec and includes some plugin-specific metadata.

Availability

OpenAI has given access to ChatGPT plugins to a selected set of users and businesses. Soon they will gradually roll out larger-scale access to everyone. These plugins will be available for developers and ChatGPT users. And after an alpha period, it will also be available for users who want to integrate plugins into their products.

You can join the waitlist by submitting your interest on its website. Once you get access, you can refer to its documentation to build a plugin.

Closing Notes

ChatGPT expanding its wings and accessing information outside its training data is truly a game-changer. It will have a huge upper hand against other LLMs like Google Bard with fine implementation. It's just a matter of a few more updates until there is a ChatGPT plugin for every primary website, and you don't need to leave your ChatGPT prompt ever again!