1. It starts with a live search
- Trigger word spotting. The moment you ask for something that might be new (“latest post,” “today,” “Eric Kim’s blog”), ChatGPT’s policy requires a fresh web lookup instead of relying only on its pre‑2025 training data.
- Tool invocation. Under the hood the assistant fires a search_query command—think of it as dropping a search term like Eric Kim blog street photography into a fast metasearch engine. The engine returns a compact list of URLs, titles and dates (each result gets a unique reference ID such as turn0search0).
2. Narrowing in on the right page
- Opening pages. For promising hits, the assistant issues an open command that grabs the raw HTML of the page (for Eric Kim that’s usually https://erickimphotography.com/blog/…). If the site loads, the tool streams the first ~2 000 characters so the model can skim rapidly. (If a site times out or is pay‑walled, it quietly moves on to mirrors, interviews, or archives.)
- Find & skim. A quick find command hunts for key words (“quote”, “Leica”, “street photography tips”). This lets the AI jump to the paragraph that actually answers your question instead of reading the whole post top‑to‑bottom.
3. Extracting & quoting responsibly
- Fair‑use filter. The model is allowed to surface only short excerpts—usually a sentence or two—unless the content is in the public domain or the site owner licenses it freely. Longer passages are paraphrased.
- Citation tagging. Every direct quote is wrapped in quotation marks and followed by a special citation tag:
“Shoot with your heart, not with your eyes.” [oai_citation:2‡aboutphotography.blog](https://aboutphotography.blog/photographer/eric-kim)
- The tag links the line to the exact page that was opened (you’ll see it rendered as a superscript‑style link in the chat UI).
4. Double‑checking freshness
- Date sanity check. The assistant compares the article’s publish date to today’s date (13 Jun 2025). If the post is older than you expected, it explicitly tells you so; if it’s brand‑new, it highlights that fact.
- Conflict resolution. If multiple sources disagree (e.g., two posts give different workshop dates), the assistant calls open on each, lines them up side‑by‑side in memory, and picks the one with the clearer timestamp or the author’s own site as the tie‑breaker.
5. Delivering the answer you see
- Composing the narrative. Now that the assistant has the facts and verified quotes, it writes a human‑friendly reply—in this case with an upbeat, motivational tone just for you—sprinkling in the citations.
- UI flourish. If images would add value (say, a carousel of Eric Kim’s street shots) the model can issue one image_query and show them in a swipeable gallery at the top of the reply. For ordinary text answers, citations alone keep things clean.
6. Key limitations to remember
| What ChatGPT can do | What it won’t do |
| Pull publicly accessible text, short quotes, post metadata, and small images. | Bypass paywalls, scrape large copyrighted chunks, or show material the site owner blocks via robots.txt. |
| Tell you why a page failed (timeout, 403, etc.) and try alternatives. | Keep polling a site forever—it times out after a few seconds and moves on. |
| Cite every external fact so you can click and verify. | Hide its sources (a missing citation is a red flag). |
Quick tip: get the best quotes from Eric Kim
Ask like this:
“Please quote Eric Kim’s own words from his 2024 post ‘Why Street Photography Matters’ about the importance of ‘shooting with your heart.’”
That single sentence gives ChatGPT (1) the author, (2) the exact article, and (3) the theme to find, guaranteeing a tight, well‑sourced answer.
💡 Bottom line: whenever you see a citation tag in my answers, remember a mini‑process exactly like the one above just unfolded—fast, transparent, and always under your control. Happy idea‑hunting and keep creating with first‑principles passion!