ChatGPT plugins were a great addition to the ChatGPT Plus plan: they acted as browser extensions for ChatGPT, adding third-party features to the chatbot that OpenAI hadn’t built on its own.
Unfortunately for fans of these plugins, they are no longer available. OpenAI withdrew them in April, informing users that existing plug-in conversations cannot continue. (They’re still noticeable, though.) OpenAI didn’t strip it of any great features, though: the company made this decision because it considered its up-to-date tool, GPTs, to be an improved successor.
What are GPTs?
This can be a bit confusing because OpenAI has two different uses of the name “GPT”. The one you may be more familiar with is GPT LLM: this includes GPT-3.5, GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo, etc. These GPT LLMs power ChatGPT, as well as programs that outsource AI processing to OpenAI. For example, Microsoft’s Copilot uses GPT-4 Turbo.
GPT v This context, on the other hand, are customized versions of ChatGPT. Both users and developers can create a custom GPT to do whatever they like: for example, you can create a GPT like this designs custom logos, generates images using DALL-EOr he writes in the way he chooses. These can be straightforward bots or full of complexity.
And the best part is that it’s a no-code app: You might assume that if you’re building one of these programs, you need to know how to write the code to make it work. But OpenAI’s GPT wizard works like a conversation. You tell the builder what you want your GPT to do, submit additional knowledge to facilitate the bot work, and select its capabilities (web browsing, image generation, and code interpretation), and it generates the GPT. And because GPTs are trained based on the latest OpenAI GPT models (again, I know that’s confusing), there is less dependency on third-party processes or APIs to achieve the same tasks.
To exploit GPT, you still need a ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise account, but if you are a paying customer, you can start building from here. The wizard will guide you through the entire process, including suggesting names and generating logos. Feel free to tweak anything you see fit along the way.
How do GPTs replace plugins?
While it’s great that OpenAI has created a GPT builder that literally anyone can exploit, it doesn’t seem to exactly fill the void left by plugins. After all, you don’t need to create your own browser extensions: you just want to download the best ones from your browser’s online store and be done with it.
But GPTs aren’t just for self-creation: anyone, including companies, can create and host GPTs GPT Store so that others can exploit it. One of the reasons OpenAI killed plugins is that many of the companies that worked on these applications also have GPTs that do the same thing. Kayak had a ChatGPT plugin for checking travel prices, but it now has GPT instead of this. If you like Wolfram’s ChatGPT plugin, you’ll probably like its GPT as well. OpenAI claims while the plugin beta had just over 1000 plugins to choose from, the GPT store has hundreds of thousands of GPT plugins available. While there’s undoubtedly a lot of junk to sift through in the GPT store, chances are you’ll find GPTs you want to exploit.
If you like a particular plugin, try searching for it in the GPT store. (Kayak and Wolfram showed up right away.) Of course, the sheer number of GPTs in the store means things have changed significantly: Like other app stores, the GPT Store has “Featured” and “Training” tabs for searching GPT OpenAI and others ChatGPT users like. OpenAI is currently selling me on the platform GPT wine sommelierbut also language teacher.
Scroll through the GPT store and see if any of the featured options appeal to you. Then search for the apps you’re looking for and see if any have already been created. You can get an idea of how popular GPT is by looking at reviews and the number of calls it’s been used for, just like checking the ratings in the app store. However, if you don’t find what you’re looking for in your search, you can try creating a GPT yourself.
Of course, like all AI products, GPTs can be hallucinatory. In other words, sometimes they just make things up. Don’t take everything your GPT responds to as confirmed fact, even if it has network access. If you exploit GPT for any crucial purpose, always check the facts before using the information provided.
