OpenAI disables ChatGPT’s Browse with Bing shortly after beta release

OpenAI will temporarily stop offering the Browse with Bing beta feature for paying ChatGPT users. ChatGPT would ‘sometimes show content in undesirable ways’. The feature was released on June 22 and it is not clear when the feature will come back online.

According to OpenAI disabling ChatGPT’s internet browsing feature was done out of an ‘abundance of caution’ to protect content owners. In some cases, ChatGPT would display information incorrectly, for example by ‘unintentionally doing so when requested to display the full text of a URL’. This suggests that the tech company is taking the feature offline due to copyright concerns. OpenAI does not provide any other examples.

The feature had been in beta for less than two weeks. OpenAI says it will make Browse with Bing available again as soon as possible, but does not share an indication of when this should happen.

The Browse with Bing feature allows ChatGPT Plus subscribers to use the iOS app to give the generative language model access to the Bing search engine. Unlike the standard version of ChatGPT, the language model via Browse with Bing can use information that is more up-to-date. ChatGPT is trained on older data and has limited knowledge about events after 2021.

Update, 12:55 p.m: The article suggested that there is also a ChatGPT Android app available. This was wrong.