I don't think you are using it wrong, I think using it as a google replacement is completely valid.

I self-host my own llms (using openwebUI interface) and that is something you can do even if you don't want to run llms locally (you configure openwebUI to use your current provider as its backend via API settings).

I mention this because if you are running your own frontend, it allows you to customize things in a way beyond what you get by just using the stock "ChatGPT" interface.

For example, OpenwebUI has these concepts that I use:

• RAG
• Tools
• Skills

I use each of these for different things. As an example, I'm currently reading a philosophy book that is pretty dense and has lots of fairly complicated terms and concepts....so I loaded the epub into my RAG (Knowledge) section of OpenWebUI and then I can "chat with the book".

For Tools and Skills, this allows further customization. A Skill is just a long natural text instruction teaching the LLM how to perform certain tasks. For example for my job we have an "Incident Report" email that must be sent to customers that outlines (a) What went wrong, (b) Why it went wrong, (c) Date/Time server affected, etc....So I created a Skill in my OpenWebUI that allows me to just say: "Draft a Incident Report for XXXXXX" and then it returns a nicely formatted email that I can cut-paste into an email.

Tools are basically just python functions that OpenWebUI can use to extend its abilities, so for instance if you have a SQL database that has data, you could create a function that logs into database and retrieves rows, etc.