Introducing Glimpse: Chat with the Internet
Hey friends! My team and I are thrilled to share that Glimpse is now available for Chrome and Brave users.
Glimpse was born from a few frustrations with ChatGPT, a tool we all used daily:
1. Outdated information
ChatGPT couldn't tell us what the weather would be like tomorrow, which channel the big game would be on, or what NVIDIA's stock price was looking like.
2. Hallucinations & lack of sources
Given that we often used ChatGPT as a jumping off point to validate initial questions and dive deeper, we yearned for a similar experience that cited its sources (for trustworthy answers) and provided links to dive deeper into the sources used.
3. No website context
We all used ChatGPT in our desktop browser and found ourselves frantically switching between tabs to copy and paste context into ChatGPT. It felt like ChatGPT lived in our browser, but only as a guest and not a resident.
4. Tab switching
Similar to the point above, we found ourselves managing multiple browser windows to achieve a side-by-side chat experience.
With these frustrations mounting, we began to feel like there could be a better AI-assisted browsing experience. Thus, Glimpse!
Glimpse solves for these four primary pain points while using OpenAI's API under the hood for the best of both worlds.
1. Real-time internet access
Glimpse scours the web to find real-time sources and information — no more "September 2021" messages.
2. Trustworthy citations in response
Glimpse provides citations to support the validity of its responses. We've found it particularly useful for diving deeper into a specific topic.
3. Glimpse understand the website you're looking at
When you open Glimpse in your browser's side panel, it can serve as a direct LLM connection to the tab you have focused. Ask it questions about an article, have it find a vague topic in a long PDF, or even ask how the product you're looking at compares to similar products.
4. Native side panel experience
Glimpse lives in your browser's side panel, reducing context switching and providing users with a side-by-side experience that doesn't resort to injecting the entire chat experience into every website.
We spent a good chunk of time getting Glimpse ready for early users, and we're incredibly curious to hear what your thoughts are after giving it a try.
More information:
Fascinating and congrats on the launch! Have you thought about charging/ when you'll start charging?
Not yet. We want to make sure we're providing enough value over similar tools to justify offering a paid version.
I too very much enjoyed how it detected my browser. Made it really personal. I have a question though, why can't I make it go through g2 reviews? I tried with bard too and they can't do it as well. Is there any issue that is preventing the Glimpse to do that? When looking at SaaS competitors I like to see what people don't like about their solution.
It would be super nice to get a rank for pain points by how often it got mentioned.
I know it's super specific but I was just wondering.
Also, the "New Glimpse Chat" button is a bit confusing. It doesn't act like the + on the bottom that just opens up a new chat.
Wish you the best of luck!
Re: G2, the short answer is not all websites are made the same, and some require specific guidance to fully parse and convey info to an LLM. Seems like G2 is one of those sites, and we'll make sure to take a look at how we can parse it correctly :)
A public feature request system would be super interesting, we'll look into this.
Thanks for your feedback Christian!
I appreciate little things like recognising the browser that I'm using and showing me the appropriate link to the store for that browser.
Might I suggest a different default keyboard shortcut.. The E key is right next to the W key.. Is that something you can change? Or is that a Chromium shortcut for the sidebar?
Hey Luke! Appreciate the feedback. We've gotten some other users requesting a different shortcut, and are considering adding a custom shortcut setting.
Pardon my ignorance, but how are you able to provide real-time internet access? If open-ai can't do it, why can you?
Thanks for the question! In short, my assumption is that it just hasn’t been their priority. They’re largely a research / API company, not as much a consumer company. They certainly can, and in fact today they just released a version with real-time internet access. That being said, if you try it, you’ll notice it’s unreliable - I’m sure they will improve upon it in the near future.
Regarding realtime context from the websites you (personally) browse, ChatGPT is a website rather than a browser extension, so it can’t use direct context to provide more pointed, relevant responses about a given website.
Well seems now CHATGPT has access to the internet. I'm wondering what are you thoughts for the next steps?
Serendipitous timing! Regarding real-time internet access, we're going to continue down the same path:
I think it would be silly to confidently say that Glimpse is better than ChatGPT in every way — OpenAI has a large, smart and talented team! That being said, we look forward to doubling down and improving upon the features Glimpse users are getting the most value from.