Can someone explain Web browsing capability? I have built a pickaxe where a user can put in a stock ticker to retrieve real-time information, and I clicked web browsing capability to do this. But the results are not current—in fact, they are very old. Why? I am using GPT4o, so data should be real-time, correct?
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When you enable web-browsing, this does not mean the tool uses web-browsing by default every time it generates a response. It just means the tool has the ability to use web-browsing when it wants.
Here’s a quick explanation. Every time someone asks a question, before it generates an output the AI will:
- Look at the user’s question
- Decide whether it needs to use web-browsing
- Use web browsing to get information (or not use web-browsing)
- Generates a response.
How you write your prompt matters as well. You can instruct the tool when it is or is not appropriate to use web-browsing.
For your use-case, I would suggest including the following direction in your prompt: “Whenever someone mentions a stock ticker, use web browsing to search the web and gather up-to-date information on it”
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OK, thanks, Mike. Your tip worked on the first test, presenting current stock information. Unfortunately, I tested it with several different stock tickers, and the real-time information wasn’t correct. I guess maybe these are the hallucinations people talk about? I see another Pickaxe user connecting with an API to his account to obtain similar stock information. I didn’t think web browsing through an API was possible?
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