OpenAI brings ChatGPT to the web and services with plugins

OpenAI today unveiled ChatGPT plugins, giving the assistant a way to move beyond the data it was trained on and use external tools. The new feature allows it to search for up-to-date information on the web, run code and access third-party services from within a conversation.

Access will initially be limited to ChatGPT Plus users and developers who have joined a waitlist. It is not yet a broadly available feature, but it marks a significant shift: ChatGPT is moving from generating text to being able to retrieve data and take action through connected applications.

Three tools to expand ChatGPT

OpenAI is launching two in-house plugins. The first allows ChatGPT to browse the internet through Bing's search API. Until now, ChatGPT's knowledge had a cutoff date, and it could not verify what had happened recently. With this tool, it can run searches, open results and cite the pages used in its response.

The feature has deliberate limits. The browser makes read-only requests—it cannot fill out forms or take actions equivalent to making a purchase—and it respects the restrictions websites specify in their robots.txt files. Even so, access to the web introduces a familiar problem: a page may contain instructions designed to confuse the model or alter its behavior. This is known as prompt injection, a form of manipulation that uses text directed at the AI.

The second plugin is a code interpreter. It gives ChatGPT access to an isolated environment where it can write and run Python, a programming language widely used for data analysis. Users can upload files and ask the system, for example, to clean up a spreadsheet, generate a chart or convert file formats. For many office tasks, this capability is more valuable than a fluently written answer: it makes it possible to verify calculations and work with concrete data.

From answering questions to using services

The most ambitious part of the announcement is the set of plugins developed by outside companies. This initial test includes, among others, Expedia and KAYAK for travel; OpenTable for restaurants; Instacart for shopping; Klarna for products; FiscalNote for legal and political information; Speak for language learning; Wolfram for calculations and scientific knowledge; and Zapier for connecting thousands of business applications.

The idea is straightforward: instead of opening several websites, users could describe a need in everyday language and let ChatGPT access the appropriate service. Asking for flight options, finding an available table or analyzing a company's data are immediate examples. The outcome will nevertheless depend on each service providing reliable data, the model formulating its queries correctly and the user reviewing the response before making a decision.

OpenAI is also releasing an information-retrieval, or retrieval, plugin that allows developers to connect ChatGPT to their own documents and knowledge bases. It is a practical alternative for companies that want to query the AI about internal manuals, contracts or technical documentation without having to retrain a model from scratch.

The beginning of connected assistants

Language models have excelled at drafting, summarizing and conversing, but their usefulness declines when they need up-to-date information or access to real-world systems. Plugins target precisely that limitation. They also change the nature of the risk: an error in a piece of text can be annoying; an error when recommending a product, interpreting a regulation or sending data to an external service can have more concrete consequences.

That is why OpenAI has opted for a small, gradual rollout. The company says it has conducted safety testing and acknowledges that these tools may introduce new forms of misuse. The caution is justified: connecting a model that can make mistakes to the web and commercial platforms requires technical safeguards, clear permissions and human oversight.

The trial will show whether ChatGPT can become a useful interface for digital services or whether the complexity of integrating data, instructions and actions means these features must remain limited to tightly defined use cases. For now, OpenAI has opened a race to ensure conversational assistants do more than talk about the world—they may also be able to access the tools that operate in it.