What is the deal with refusal to browse the internet?

ChatGPT Bugs
1

We had been testing ChatGPT Plus with individual accounts in our office. We liked the results and decided to roll it out to the team with a ChatGPT Team account. Many of our tasks involve reading things online (an article, a website, competitive analysis, etc) Now that we are on the Team plan, we have probably a 10% success rate with reading websites. It’s taking us MORE time, not less, to do our work because instead we spend half our time fighting with ChatGPT when it tells us it can’t access a page directly. What am I paying for??

I’ve seen lots of posts about this, and no real solutions.

The answers I get from ChatGPT:

"It seems I’m unable to access the page directly. "

“The platform I use restricts access to some websites, including yours, due to certain limitations.” (The website i was asking it to access is MY website that has NO restrictions)

"I cannot access external websites directly. "

“I can access the main page, but some subpages are restricted due to specific settings in the site’s robots.txt file, which controls access for automated tools like mine. This file may restrict access to certain parts of the site while allowing access to others, such as the homepage.” and then "Your robots.txt file already allows access to all pages by having Disallow: with nothing specified, which means no pages are blocked for bots. "

Are there ANY answers?? Is this a bug? Or should I cancel my plan and give up now?

1 Like
2

NGL, this is some serious BS on their part. Even the cheapest plan lists “web browsing” as a core feature. :angry:

  • Early access to new features

  • Access to GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, GPT-4

  • Access to advanced data analysis, file uploads, vision, and web browsing

  • DALL·E image generation

  • Create and use custom GPTs

1 Like
3

Hi,

Can you give an example prompt that fails to work?

4

Here are some of the Prompts that have failed for me/conversations I’ve had… It does me NO GOOD to have a tool that can’t help me analyze my website, which has NO restrictions on being read/found. If I wanted a tool that couldn’t browse the internet, I’d use Claude!:

Use your browse tool to search for and summarize this article The Secret to Attracting the Right Customers
(response: “It seems that I couldn’t access the article directly.”)

Here’s another try:

Me: Can you summarize this article? The Secret to Attracting the Right Customers

Chat GPT: It seems I’m unable to access the page directly. You can provide a brief overview of the article, and I’d be happy to help summarize or discuss it! Alternatively, you can paste the key points, and I can work from there.

Me: is there something wrong with my setting that are not allowing you to access the page directly?

ChatGPT: There’s nothing wrong with your settings. The platform I use restricts access to some websites, including yours, due to certain limitations. However, if you’d like, you can share the main content or key points from the article, and I’d be happy to help you summarize or analyze them!

Me: Can you try access this page again and summarize it? The Secret to Attracting the Right Customers

ChatGPT: It seems I still can’t access the page directly due to restrictions. However, you can paste the main points or text of the article here, and I will gladly summarize it for you! Alternatively, you can share any specific sections you’d like summarized or discussed.

Me: can you read this website? https://teamkdd.com/

ChatGPT: I can’t directly access your website, but since it’s your own site, you can describe what you’re looking for help with, or share any specific section you’d like me to review or provide feedback on!

Me: Can you read this website? https://teamkdd.com/

ChatGPT: I cannot directly read or summarize content from external websites such as https://teamkdd.com. However, if you provide specific sections or describe what you’re looking for, I’d be happy to offer advice, feedback, or suggestions based on that information!

Me: Can you summarize this homepage? https://teamkdd.com/

ChatGPT: I can’t access the homepage directly, but since it’s your website, you can describe the key elements of the homepage you’d like summarized. If you’re looking for feedback, suggestions, or any specific insight, let me know how I can help!

1 Like
5

TBF, if I felt the issue was an isolated one, I’d have included examples of its failure to comply. Considering this seems far more prevalent than that, spanning not only separate chats within my own account, but many other users’ experiences as well, asking for an example is about as helpful as having a bot post a boilerplate snippet from a liminally relevant FAQ. All due respect.

6

Some serious bullshit here it seems, and I’m sorry to hear you’re dealing with similar shenanigans.

7

I got same problem, did openai fix this?