The ChatGPT networking function is officially launched and is only available to paying players

Following the official announcement of OpenAI at the end of September that it would add networking capabilities to ChatGPT by integrating Microsoft's Bing search engine, it was already indicated that the networking function would be open for testing for Plus and Enterprise users. OpenAI has now officially confirmed that the ChatGPT networking feature has ended its testing and is officially live. Networking means that ChatGPT's data can be updated in real time, providing users with richer and more diverse information and links to sources, rather than being limited to a specific point in time. For example, GPT-3.5 data is limited to before September 2021, and it does not know what happened after that. At present, the networking function is still only available to Plus and Enterprise users, but according to information previously disclosed by OpenAI, this function will also be available to free users in the future.

**It should be noted that ChatGPT's networking feature was launched as early as May this year, when it was only available to Plus users. But then in July, OpenAI announced a temporary ban on the feature because "it sometimes displays content in ways we don't want, such as GPT inadvertently satisfying this request if a user specifically requests the full text of a URL." In other words, OpenAI found that some users appeared to be using networking to bypass the paywalls of some websites or platforms in order to access relevant content or other paid content for free.

At the end of September, OpenAI announced that the ChatGPT networking function was back online, although the official did not directly mention this problem, but said that it would provide ChatGPT's network requests with User Agents information and follow the relevant crawler protocol, which also means that website owners can modify the content of the protocol to "control how ChatGPT interacts with them" to prevent their own paid content from being prostituted again.

The networking feature requires ChatGPT Plus members to pay $20 per month, or about 146 yuan, which is worth considering for those users who have requirements for timeliness of information, as it improves the accuracy and reliability of GPT feedback. **While OpenAI previously said in the original announcement that the feature would be available to all users soon, the exact date is unknown. Until then, Bing Chat is a nice alternative because it's also GPT-4 powered and has access to the internet and most importantly is free to use.

It was recently reported that OpenAI may plan to launch a major update at its first developer conference in November to make it cheaper and faster to build applications based on its large base model, as well as more developer tools, hoping to attract more developers to pay to access its large model and build various applications, such as writing assistants or customer service bots. It is also reported that one of the contents of OpenAI's update is to add memory storage to the developer tools. According to reports, this could theoretically reduce the cost of app development to 5%, and cost is "indeed a major concern for developers."

** Recent news has raised concerns that OpenAI may be in talks with potential investors to sell shares of existing employees at a valuation of $86 billion, but the final plan has not yet been finalized and terms may change, with news that Thrive Capital is actively participating in the investment recently. **Notable is the $86 billion price mark, more than tripling the price of GPT-4 earlier this year before it went live. According to Reuters, after GPT-4 went live in March, OpenAI promoted a $300 million stock sale, and OpenAI's valuation at the time was about $30 billion.

**Although OpenAI on the table can be said to be infinite, there are also many problems. **For example, some website statistics show that the number of users on OpenAI's official website began to decline after reaching a peak of 1.9 billion in May this year, the number of users in July was about 1.5 billion, and it continued to decline in August, but it picked up at the end of the month, and the traffic in September is still picking up, but it is still far below the peak when GPT-4 was first launched this spring, and the social impact is also not the same. In addition, there is now the almost commonly known "daily average of $700,000", which is just OpenAI's daily investment to run ChatGPT and the company, and if you include the development and operation of products such as DALL-E, the amount of money required can only be even greater. At the same time, there is the copyright and monopoly issue that has been debated for most of the year, which is the real tricky thing about OpenAI's survival, and the average daily $700,000 is not a trouble.

If the investment is successfully completed, OpenAI's valuation will be higher than Musk's proud SpaceX. Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Altman has said that he has no stake in OpenAI and will not directly benefit from the company's soaring valuation this time, only to help OpenAI compete with other startups in the battle for engineering talent, as well as more established rivals such as Google and Amazon.

Last week, Altman told internal employees that OpenAI's annualized revenue has reached $1.3 billion, or about 9.5 billion yuan, with an average monthly revenue of more than $100 million. Last year's average monthly revenue was $28 million. In addition, OpenAI's workforce has more than doubled since the end of last year and now has about 700 people. As a company that can lead the trend of the times, OpenAI certainly does not want to be as fleeting as a shooting star, rather than sitting still, it is better to actively save itself. **