If you thought that ChatGPT announced a small revolution in the daily life of millions of people, you haven’t seen anything yet. Because that was before its creator OpenAI introduced third-party services that plug directly into its AI.
OpenAI calls them its “plugins”. The French term is “plugiciel”. These are software extensions that allow ChatGPT to add strings to its bow. One of these extensions was created by OpenAI itself and takes the form of a web browser that allows its generative AI to search the Internet for information that its information bank has so far lacked.
Since its launch last fall, ChatGPT has been drawing on data collected from all over the Internet and dating from before the fall of 2021. This new web browser fills a gaping hole: that of more recent news. Users who pay for access to ChatGPT Plus and can add this browser to their plugin arsenal will now have a consistent response when asked about an event that occurred in previous days.
For example, ChatGPT can compile a list of the most recent winners of the Academy Awards, which celebrates the best Hollywood movies and actors. She can get the sports results, too, why not.
What she still doesn’t do is play fortune teller or stage manager. Nobody knows if the Montreal Canadiens will make the playoffs next year, or if the Arizona Coyotes will soon be called the Houston Coyotes, not even the most sophisticated AI currently available on the Internet!
Bye bye Google?
With the right plugins, ChatGPT goes even further. An example presented by OpenAI of what its AI will now be able to do concerns food. This example requires three separate plug-ins. The first gives access to the reservation application in OpenTable restaurants. The second is provided by the Wolfram Alpha search engine. The third bridges the Instacart grocery delivery service.
In the example provided by OpenAI, the user asks ChatGPT in a single sentence to find him a trendy neighborhood restaurant for the meal on Saturday evening, then to produce a recipe for the meal on Sunday evening, and to take into account of the calorie intake of all that food.
The AI can find a restaurant and make the reservation using OpenTable. She can then find an interesting and quick recipe to make for the next day. She then breaks down that recipe and creates a list of ingredients for which she places the order at the nearest grocery store found by Instacart, who will then deliver the correct foods directly to the house.
This model pushes much further the relationship that ChatGPT users will have with the Internet. Suddenly, the concept of the digital virtual assistant is taking on a much more concrete form than the assistants that exist on personal computers and smart phones currently on the market.
This model also eliminates all the manual research that would normally be necessary to answer a fairly simple question: how to eat well at the end of the week?
A question that millions of Internet users ask Google every week. Google must also suddenly ask itself what are the ingredients of the hot soup that it feels rising around its search engine…
New dimension for apps
It only took a few weeks for ChatGPT to reach the milestone of one billion unique visits to its website. It shattered all records for speed of adoption by a web, mobile or other application.
By inviting creators of third-party applications to create an extension for its AI, OpenAI wants to extend its success. For different reasons. The first is obvious: because his income is much lower than his expenses.
The second: OpenAI isn’t the only player in this relatively new technology sector of advanced consumer chatbots. The Californian company can count on the support of Microsoft, but Google, Meta and others are jealous of this sudden popularity. They also see the potential growth in their own revenue that this type of AI represents.
It’s hard to predict how it will all end. But if the model proposed by OpenAI were to gain traction, the next big business opportunity in the digital applications market would take the form of plug-ins to plug into all these generative AIs.
The urgency to act
OpenAI is under the eye of legislators in Europe and Canada. Both want to make the creators of these AIs responsible for the risks created by their technology, without preventing them from innovating.
Apparently, the balance point proposed by the governments is not to the taste of these creators. Last week, Google announced the expansion of its own generative AI, called Bard, to 180 countries, excluding Canada and members of the European Union.
Throughout its documentation, OpenAI says it wants to minimize the risks in the exchange of data between ChatGPT and its plugins. But there is no question of stopping while waiting for the Canadian and European governments to set the rules of the game…
Because tomorrow, for the OpenAIs of this world, it is today that it is played.