OpenAI has announced the temporary suspension of the Browse with Bing beta tool in its ChatGPT service. The decision comes after users reportedly exploited the feature to bypass paywalls and access content for free.
Browse with Bing allowed ChatGPT to retrieve information from recently published sources, enabling it to answer time-sensitive questions. However, the capability of the tool to bypass paywalls was underestimated by the company’s developers. When a user specifically requested the full text of a URL, the AI fulfilled the request, including displaying content from paywalled articles. OpenAI acknowledged this issue and stated its commitment to addressing it in order to respect the rights of content owners. The tool will be reintroduced at an unspecified time in the future.
