To counter DeepSeek, the Chinese conversational agent that is shaking up the American giants of artificial intelligence (AI), OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT, launched “Deep research”, a new generative AI tool, in the United States on Sunday, February 2. The latter “accomplishes in a few dozen minutes what would take a human many hours”, promises the American company in a blog article.
In a video published on its site, OpenAI describes how “Deep research” works: “you give it an instruction, and ChatGPT will find, analyze and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of an analyst”. For company CEO Sam Altman, the service is like having an “expert on demand” who “can go online, do complex research and reasoning, and report back to you. He’s really good and can do things that would take hours/days and cost hundreds of dollars,” he wrote on his X account.
A new sidebar that lets you see the “sources” used
The new feature is designed for “people who do knowledge-intensive work in finance, science, politics, and engineering who need in-depth, accurate, and reliable research,” the company says. It can also be used by people online for “purchases that typically require extensive research, such as cars, appliances, and furniture.” Concretely, Internet users can ask questions, add files such as PDFs and wait "between 5 and 30 minutes" to read the tool's response. OpenAI explains that it uses a special version of its o3 AI model for this feature.
Until now, ChatGPT only answered questions with quick answers or summaries. This new feature will allow, by launching in-depth searches, to "follow" the tool's search process, or even to verify the information and sources selected. Deep research will present, in a sidebar, a summary of the search process, with precise quotes, OpenAI emphasizes. But as with ChatGPT, OpenAI points out that the search can "sometimes hallucinate" and invent facts, the tool having difficulty differentiating verified information from rumors.
A feature not yet accessible in Europe
The feature is not yet available in Europe. It is currently only available to ChatGPT Pro users (a subscription that costs $200 per month), with a limit of 100 queries per month. Two months earlier, Google had announced a similar AI feature: the digital giant launched an updated version of Gemini, with a feature also called… “Deep Search”.
Since last week, the Chinese start-up DeepSeek has reshuffled the cards in the sector, by offering a generative AI model with costs and resources much lower than those used by companies in the sector. Enough to call into question the economic model of companies developing generative AI, which have been multiplying announcements since then to stay in the race.
Nine days earlier, OpenAI had already announced Operator, a tool that can use a web browser to perform tasks for you.
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