In the rapidly advancing world of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT plugins have become key in broadening the functionality and effectiveness of the platform. These plugins add specialized features that significantly enhance its performance, and are available to all ChatGPT Plus subscribers. We wanted to highlight some of the top ChatGPT plugins recognized for their distinct features, ease of use, and their pivotal role in extending the effectiveness of ChatGPT and everything that it can do.

1 Web requests

No more knowledge cut off

First on our list is Web Requests. While ChatGPT can access links natively, it doesn't always work, and will still sometimes struggle with its knowledge cutoff. If you want it to analyze something existing today on the web it can be difficult, and that's where web requests comes in. It can analyze links that you give it and pull information from a page, giving it to GPT-4 to process and use.

It also bypasses the restriction some websites have on ChatGPT being able to access them, as it queries an external API that returns a JSON object to ChatGPT. If you need to use ChatGPT to access the internet at all, then this is a must-have plugin.

2 Wolfram

Any STEM student will recognize Wolfram Alpha

If you've ever used the internet to help you with math, then you've probably come across Wolfram Alpha. It's a fantastically powerful tool for calculations, complete with formatting, explanations, and graphs. There's a pretty great plugin for ChatGPT called Wolfram, and it leverages the power of Wolfram Alpha right in ChatGPT. It'll generate a graph and give you the steps to solve the equation if you ask.

This is a fantastic plugin that I highly recommend any STEM student studying math should use. Wolfram Alpha was invaluable to me in my university years even just in verifying answers, and this is a great way to combine powerful generative AI with math.

3 Video Caption

Pull the transcript of any YouTube video

Video caption will pull the transcript of any video and answer questions based on it. If you want to get a quick synopsis without watching a video it's a great way to figure out what's going on, though it's still not a replacement for just watching the video itself. Artificial intelligence bots can hallucinate, meaning the results may not be as accurate as just watching yourself. Still, it'll give you a good overview, and you can query the transcript for more information if you need.

This plugin adds very similar features to ChatGPT as Nvidia's Chat with RTX program can give you, with the ability to talk with a transcript for a video. It's more powerful given it's using GPT-4 rather than a much smaller model, but the downside is that you need a ChatGPT Plus subscription to use it.

4 Prompt Perfect

The perfect prompt, everytime

If you're like me, you may struggle with writing prompts sometimes. You might have a mental block, or you might just not really get the best way to do it just yet. That's where Prompt Perfect comes in. If you type "perfect" before your prompt, it'll send your prompt to their servers and make a new, more verbose prompt that's more likely to get what you want.

For example, I asked:

How would I write a clone of Minecraft using Python?

and Prompt Perfect turned that into:

In order to create a clone of Minecraft using Python, what specific steps, techniques, and tools would need to be utilized throughout the development process? Additionally, what key features and functionalities would be essential to include in the Python-based clone to ensure it closely resembles the original Minecraft game?

Fairly self explanatory; Prompt Perfect will supercharge your prompts and make them better, so I highly recommend trying it out.

5 ScholarAI

Search across research papers

If you're a researcher and need to do research, ScholarAI might be one of the best plugins you can get. It can search abstracts, provide citations, answer questions on papers, and so much more. This is an invaluable tool for students and researchers alike, and we definitely recommend you give it a shot.

Final thoughts

ChatGPT Plugins are invaluable for anyone who wants to make the most of the service, though it requires a Plus subscription to use. There's a lot more that Plugins can do too, with hundreds available on the service. Browse through, see what you can find, and play around with them! You never know what you might find.