ChatGPT suddenly "disconnected"! OpenAI: Don't think about paying for free content

Source: Xinzhiyuan

ChatGPT was suddenly disconnected! ?

Once upon a time, the "networking" function eliminated the "time difference" between ChatGPT and the real world, allowing it to browse real-time content on the Internet to generate answers.

At the beginning of its launch, netizens spread the word and received rave reviews.

Why was it suddenly taken off the shelves by OpenAI not long after it was launched?

The official reason given is that this feature "occasionally displays some content that we don't want it to display, such as users asking it to grab the full text of certain links, and it (ChatGPT) will easily meet this requirement."

However, the official also emphasized that after they fix this problem, the "Networking" function will be back online.

Bypass the paywall and benefit the content producers

Because browsing via Bing is currently disabled, we can't demonstrate how to link to fetch content.

But there are some plugins that have a similar function, which can roughly show how the original user can prostitute articles behind the paywall.

It is not difficult to imagine what kind of trouble OpenAI will face in the future if it is so simple that users can obtain the content that originally needs to be paid.

As a star product that sparked an AI boom around the world less than a year after its launch, ChatGPT now has a huge user base.

OpenAI's website traffic exceeded 1.8 billion in April, ranking among the top 20 in the global traffic ranking.

On the other hand, paid reading is a very important profit method for foreign online media.

Especially for traditional media, after the decline of physical publications and newspapers, paid reading through websites has become an important source of income for them.

Ranking of Online Media Subscribers in 2021

Almost all influential foreign media require paid reading.

The Economist Paywall

The Information paywall

But if a tool with so many users like ChatGPT allows users to see the content directly without spending money to subscribe to these paid media.

Paid media revenue will definitely be greatly affected in the future.

If users continue to use ChatGPT to prostitute paid content for free, content producers will definitely come to trouble OpenAI.

And under Sam Altman's leadership, OpenAI was notoriously cautious.

OpenAI spent 6 months removing unsafe content before releasing GPT-4

Therefore, the removal of "Bing Browsing" is likely to be an intentional self-protection behavior of OpenAI.

The relationship with traditional media is getting closer

Some time ago, many media reported a news: several AI giants, including OpenAI, are discussing the possibility of further commercial cooperation with traditional news media.

The specific content may include two aspects:

The first is that traditional commercial media require AI giants to pay them if they use media content to train large models or related products.

Don't let the large model providers no longer wantonly prostitute the content they create.

News Corp's management said AI was "designed to fatally disrupt journalism by making readers never visit news sites".

On the other hand, AI giants are also thinking about how to sell their artificial intelligence tools and services to the media industry.

“I think our bigger opportunity is to work with publishers first and think about how they can use artificial intelligence to generate more revenue,” said Microsoft vice chairman Brad Smith.

Against the backdrop of AI giants and traditional media seeing how to make money from each other.

If OpenAI's products actually allow ordinary users to nakedly pay for paid content from the media, it will definitely have a great impact on the future business relationship between the two parties.

It is not surprising that OpenAI is so anxious to remove the "networking" function.

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