OpenAI disables ‘Browse with Bing’ after discovering people used it to read articles without a subscription, but pledges to ‘bring it back soon’ once it resolves the problem.
OpenAI has disabled the latest ChatGPT Plus feature, Browse with Bing, upon discovering users could use it to get around paywalls and read articles for free.
The issue came to light on the r/ChatGPT Reddit thread. “It looks like you can use ChatGPT to bypass paywalls,” one user wrote on June 26, along with an image of ChatGPT returning the full text of an Atlantic article that would require a subscription to read on the Atlantic website.
Browse with Bing is only available with a ChatGPT Plus account ($20 per month). It provides web access, meaning it can scrape the web for the latest information. A basic, free ChatGPT account only has data up until 2021.
OpenAI started rolling out Browse with Bing to Plus accounts in May, along with a host of other plugins that can modify and enhance the generative AI tool’s output. Last week, OpenAI confirmed the feature was fully available to all, though it’s still labeled as a beta product.
Just a few days later, on July 3, the company disabled Browse with Bing after discovering the paywall issue.
