From the course: ChatGPT Search: Conversational, Real-Time Research
Understanding the significance of web searching in ChatGPT - ChatGPT Tutorial
From the course: ChatGPT Search: Conversational, Real-Time Research
Understanding the significance of web searching in ChatGPT
- [Instructor] So why is it significant that ChatGPT now includes the ability to search the web? Well, until recently, ChatGPT's knowledge had specific cutoff dates. It could answer many questions and queries, but if the answer you were looking for occurred after its knowledge cutoff date, which depending on the model, could be between 2021 and 2023, it had no way of accessing or sharing that information with you. But now with live realtime web searching, ChatGPT can provide up-to-date answers and responses to your queries. Now, whether ChatGPT searches the web or responds from its own knowledge base depends on the type of question you're asking. For example, if I ask it a general knowledge question that it likely knows the answer to, like, what are some effective strategies for better time management, we get a thorough response that ChatGPT didn't have to search the web for. But if I ask it for something that relies more heavily on current or frequently changing information, like for example, what are the current travel restrictions for Japan, ChatGPT automatically switches to searching the web. Now we can tell this is a web response in a couple of different ways. First, you might briefly see a message that it's searching the web, but in my experience, that message doesn't always appear. But we can also see here that it cites its sources. So these links tell us where it's getting its information, and if I want to check out any of these sites, I can just click it, and that will take me to my web browser and take me directly to that site. In this case, it's also included some recent developments that I might want to read about. But here at the bottom, when it accesses the web, you'll always find the sources button. And that will give you a list of the citations it's used, as well as a list of other search results that are relevant to your question. If you're using ChatGPT on the web, you might see this open up in its own panel over here on the right. Now if you want to force ChatGPT to search the web, you can click the web search button here in the message field. So now for example, if I go back up here and just copy my original question, which it didn't have to use the web for, and I paste that into the message area, but with search enabled, now we'll see what it pulls from the web. So now we have this list of strategies from a wide variety of websites. And again, we can tell it's searched the web because we see these citations and we have the sources button down here at the bottom where we can see all the citations, as well as a list of search results, which again, are more in line with what you'd get from say, a Google search. Now, whether ChatGPT search is or can be a replacement for Google is up to you. It certainly has advantages like being able to perform conversational searches and follow-ups, which we'll talk about in the next video. And unlike Google these days, your search results aren't filled with ads or promoted websites that can make it difficult to find what you're really looking for. Now that said, ChatGPT Search is still new, and OpenAI is still forming media partnerships, so it remains to be seen as to how good and relevant its search results are, and that will also most likely vary based on what you're searching for. For now though, if you have access to ChatGPT Search, it's definitely already a useful and significant tool to have alongside more traditional web search engines.