ChatGPT has been upgraded with additional knowledge that will allow the chatbot to offer more up-to-date and accurate information, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced at the company’s first developer conference on Monday. The AI chatbot was previously trained on information up to September 2021 when it was made available to the public in November last year, making the new update a significant one. The additional information will be accessible to users who have paid for access to OpenAI’s most powerful large language model (LLM), according to the company.
At the first OpenAI DevDay that began on Monday, Altman announced that ChatGPT would now have access to world events and information up to April 2023. Until now, users could only ask the chatbot about events that took place before September 2021 — ChatGPT couldn’t accurately answer questions related to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, or the waning of the coronavirus pandemic over the last two years.
Earlier this year, OpenAI announced a ‘Browse with Bing’ feature that allowed users to get information from the Internet using the chatbot, but that process would consume more time and was not based on information and data that the chatbot was trained on. “We are just as annoyed as all of you — probably more — that GPT-4’s knowledge about the world ended in 2021. We will try to never let it get that out of date again,” Altman said.
In addition to being trained on more up-to-date information, ChatGPT powered by GPT-4 Turbo will also be able to process an image as a prompt, answer queries more accurately by consuming up to 300 pages of a book, or even aid software development.
However, not all ChatGPT users will have access to the latest knowledge base at the moment. OpenAI has revealed that customers who have paid to access GPT-4 Turbo — the company’s most capable LLM at the moment — will be able to use ChatGPT trained with knowledge up to this year. GPT-4 Turbo is currently in preview for developers and will be released in a few weeks, according to the company.