5 ChatGPT plugins that do what they promise

OpenAI has finally given ChatGPT the “eyes and ears” needed to truly take advantage of its premier generative AI-based chatbot. ChatGPT Plus subscribers now have access to over 70+ plugins, which somehow exponentially expand the capabilities of ChatGPT-4. The new feature is still in beta and it shows, with some plugins failing to do what they were built to do in the first place.

Due to the large number of plugins available and added on a weekly basis, we found it beneficial to point out which plugins are worth using and actually do what they promise.

Scraper

One of the key features of the new ChatGPT plugin feature is its ability to access the internet to interpret and analyze data. Every plugin has the ability to access the web in one way or another, and the “Scraper” plugin is by far the most useful of the bunch. While some plugins are highly specialized in how they use ChatGPT’s internet access, Scraper works more broadly with the ability to “scrape” information from any URL you feed it.

Credit: Screenshot / OpenAI

The scraping tool does not involve actual web scraping. Instead, the web scraping tool used by ChatGPT simulates the process and results of web scraping without interacting with real websites or storing data. And it does what it says it does. Need to summarize a news article in smaller bullet points? It can do that. Want to analyze the front page of Reddit to see what’s trending? It can also do that. While the full extent of what Scraper can and cannot do has not been fully tested, it is a useful tool that can quickly summarize information from a given website. I even fed it a Google search link on OpenAI and it told me the top 6 search results from the site in no time.

Credit: Screenshot / OpenAI

I am rich

Straight up, the “I Am Rich” plugin is one of the least useful of the bunch, and not calling it “useless” is me being generous. But since this is a list of ChatGPT plugins that do as promised, it would be rude not to mention it.

“Congratulations on your success.”
Credit: Screenshot / OpenAI

“I Am Rich” has only one function: image generation. Once turned on, users can activate the plugin with the trigger phrase “I Am Rich” and the plugin will display the “iamrich.jpg” image. It appears to be a reference to the infamous 2008 iPhone app of the same name(opens in a new tab) which cost $999.99 and also did nothing but display the same image(opens in a new tab). That’s it, that’s all it does, but at least it does what it promises without charging a dime, and for that it has my respect.

Playlist AI

This playlist maker ChatGPT plugin is based on the AI ​​Playlist Maker app available for iOS. You can be as specific or broad as you like with the plugin and it will instantly create something to your liking.

However, it has some limitations. First, there is a cap on the number of playlists the AI ​​will create for you. After you reach a certain limit, the plugin will return an error code with a payment URL and a support email for users who want to continue using AI. So it works for free a handful of times, but then it will try to sell you a $3.99 per month subscription, and since we at Mashable didn’t subscribe, we can’t evaluate the subscriber experience.

Second, depending on how specific your parameters were, the playlists the AI ​​curates for you will occasionally ignore what you told ChatGPT to do. For example, I asked ChatGPT to give me a “15-song R&B playlist of songs from the 90s, 2000s and today.” PlaylistAI quickly provided me with a playlist of songs 20 songs that included rap music from Jay-Z and Lil Wayne – which was close but not exactly what I asked for. In terms of basic functionality, however, it does as promised, and if you’re looking to create a playlist with a certain vibe, PlaylistAI is a great tool to get started with.

Last I checked, “Look At Me Now” wasn’t an R&B song.
Credit: Screenshot / Spotify

Apartment/House Hunting

Are you looking for an apartment or house in an imminent collapse(opens in a new tab) the real estate market? Well, ChatGPT offers a bunch of different real estate plugins for prospective tenants. There isn’t much difference between the many plugins offered unless you have a specific preference for which real estate company you like.

Given the same parameters, the three real estate plugins I used (Zillow, Zumper, and Rentable Apartments) worked as intended. I was looking for a 4 bedroom 3 bath house in Austin, Texas within my price range and the AIs did what I asked for to an extent. Rentable Apartments only showed me one unit that was exactly what I asked for, but it provided pictures, while the others did not. By far the best of the trio was Zillow, which gave me everything I asked for plus some well-written descriptions of the units that weren’t attached to the listing.

Currently in my “House Hunters” era.
Credit: Screenshot / OpenAI

Just like PlaylistAI, the beauty of these plugins is that their usefulness comes from their basic helpfulness. Basically, the Zillow plugin won’t rent a house for you, but it will give you a list to start from, which can save a lot of time when you start your apartment/house hunting journey.

Three in a row

Okay, maybe apartment hunting is too stressful for you right now (it is for me), how about a game? One of the more interesting additions from ChatGPT plugins is the ability for users to play games with AI. As of now, only three games are offered. Two of them are word guessing games that task you with figuring out the word the AI ​​gives clues for, and the other is Tic Tac Toe – pretty self-explanatory.

The way it works with ChatGPT is that the AI ​​will create a visual board screen from 1-9 with the ‘X’ and ‘O’ placed on whatever number the user enters. There are three difficulty settings and the default board size is 3×3. The add-on also offers 4×4, 5×5 and 6×6 board sizes. The board is updated every time you and the AI ​​make a move.

I certainly didn’t lose a game of Tic Tac Toe to an AI.
Credit: Screenshot / OpenAI

After playing a few rounds, the game is surprisingly fun and works as intended. And while it offers no functional benefit other than keeping yourself occupied for a few minutes, it shows how far this little chatbot has come since its debut last October. These AIs grow up fast, don’t they?