A little over two weeks ago, OpenAI announced it would supercharge the free version of ChatGPT, giving users access to features previously limited to ChatGPT Plus subscribers at no cost. The company said it would be rolling the upgrade out to users in the coming weeks, and the wait is finally over.
On Wednesday, OpenAI shared in an X post that all free ChatGPT users could now access the features launched at the Spring Updates event, including web browsing, vision, data analysis, file uploads, and GPTs.
The browse feature allows ChatGPT to pull answers from the web — a huge bonus for users, since it allows them to ask questions on current events, ensures that the information in ChatGPT’s answers is up to date, and even provides links so users can verify the accuracy of the response.
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Browse turns on automatically when a user asks for a prompt that requires access to the web. For example, using my free ChatGPT account, I asked, “What is the weather today in NYC?” As seen below, ChatGPT browsed the web to produce my answer.
The vision feature allows users to share images with the chatbot and get more advanced insights. For example, OpenAI shared that users would be able to “take a picture of a menu in a different language and talk to GPT-4o to translate it, learn about the food’s history and significance, and get recommendations.”
As the name implies, the data analysis feature means free users can now use ChatGPT to get insights, create interactive charts, and visualize data, all features previously reserved for ChatGPT Plus users. With file uploads, users can upload spreadsheets, documents, presentations, research papers, PDFs, and more, and use ChatGPT to analyze, interpret, transform, and extract information from them.
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Lastly, free users can now access GPTs via the GPT store, meaning they’ll be able to try millions of chatbots customized to suit a specific purpose or task. For example, the AllTrails GPT can help users find trails for their next outdoor adventure, and the Canva GPT can help users design projects.
The addition of all of these free features makes ChatGPT Plus — the chatbot’s $20 monthly premium subscription option — a bit less enticing. However, there are still some perks to the subscription, which you can read more about here.
Artificial Intelligence
