ChatGPT is not just a powerful tool by itself; it can potentially become more powerful, or in other words, its output can be more accurate, thanks to the use of plugins. By interacting with specially designed APIs, these plug-ins expand ChatGPT’s capabilities, allowing it to do even more than before. And the best part? There are currently over 100 different ChatGPT plugins to choose from, so you can customize your experience to suit your needs.
With plugins, ChatGPT becomes more than just a text-based tool. It transforms into your personal assistant that can:
- Retrieve last-minute details, like the score of your favorite sports game, the current price of a stock, or the latest news headlines.
- Dig into knowledge bases to extract specific information, such as business documents or even personal notes.
- Help you with day-to-day tasks, whether it’s booking flights for your next vacation or ordering dinner from your favorite restaurant.
As a ChatGPT user, you should explore and experiment with these plug-ins, and we recommend you do so to see how they can produce better results for you. But before you do, here are some things you should know about ChatGPT plugins.
8 things to know before installing ChatGPT plugins
1. Understand what the plugin does before enabling it
Plugins in ChatGPT are built and powered by 3rd party applications and are totally independent, not controlled by OpenAI. Before installing a plugin, make sure you understand what the plugin does, and do your due diligence to ensure you trust the plugin before enabling it.
2. Plugins may share your information
Plugins act as bridges connecting ChatGPT to external applications. When you enable a particular plugin, ChatGPT may share information with it and its developer.
This information could include the details of your conversation, any personalized instructions you’ve provided, and even the country or state you’re located in.
3. Plugins will only be activated as needed
When you enable one or more plugins in ChatGPT, the system will automatically decide when to use them during a conversation. This decision is based on the specific plug-ins you have activated and the needs of the conversation.
For example, if you’ve enabled a plugin that can read YouTube transcripts, but your prompts or instructions don’t contain anything related to YouTube or a YouTube URL, the plugin will be ignored when generating the email response. AI.
In other words, the plugin’s functionality is only invoked when it’s relevant to the conversation.
4. You will need to be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber to use the plugins
To use the plugins in ChatGPT, you must both subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, the paid version of ChatGPT, and choose GPT-4 instead of GPT-3.5. If you don’t meet these requirements, the options to select, use and install plug-ins will not be accessible.
5. You will need to enable the plugins in the settings page
Also, to use the plugins in ChatGPT, you will need to go to “Settings and beta version‘ > ‘Beta functionality‘> ‘plugins’ and enable them.
6. You can develop and submit your plugin
You can also develop your own plugin and submit it to be available to other ChatGPT users in the plugin store. To learn more about developing your own ChatGPT plugin, check out this page.
7. A maximum of 3 plug-ins can be enabled at the same time
You can enable multiple plugins at once, but only up to a maximum of 3 at a time. If you want to enable another plugin, you will need to disable one of the others first.
Once enabled, the plugin will remain on the specific chat page and you will not be able to edit it. To switch to another plugin or a different set of plugins, you’ll need to create a new chat.
8. Plug-ins cannot be edited once they are enabled
All your enabled plugins will be shown at the top of the specific chat page. You cannot change or swap plugins on the chat page once you’ve chosen them; however, you can create several chat pages and use different sets of plugins on each one.
For example, on the “Holiday Research” chat page, you can have Expedia, Image searchAND Wolfram plug-ins enabled and on the “Holiday Planner” chat page you can have Expedia, KayakAND Video insights plugins enabled.
