OpenAI's Deep Research Turns ChatGPT Into a Research Assistant
Introduction
In a rare Sunday announcement, OpenAI launched yesterday Deep research, a new “agentic” feature in ChatGPT that turns the chatbot into a research assistant. In less than an hour, Deep research can provide detailed insights on any topic by searching the web, summarizing information, and producing a detailed report with citations.
Deep Research Capabilities
“Deep research is built for people who do intensive knowledge work in areas like finance, science, policy, and engineering and need thorough, precise, and reliable research,” OpenAI explained in the announcement. “It can be equally useful for discerning shoppers looking for hyper-personalized recommendations on purchases that typically require careful research, like cars, appliances, and furniture. Every output is fully documented, with clear citations and a summary of its thinking, making it easy to reference and verify the information.”
Deep Research by Google
Deep research in ChatGPT mirrors a similarly-named “Deep Research” assistant that Google released for Gemini Advanced users back in December. Deep Research in Google Gemini also promises users to save hours of research by producing a comprehensive report on a specific topic with links to original sources. A Google Gemini Advanced subscription is also much cheaper at $19.99/month.
Agentic Capability and Subscription
This new agentic capability for ChatGPT is powered by a custom version of OpenAI’s new o3 model optimized for web data analysis. It’s currently only available with a $200/month ChatGPT Pro subscription as it’s currently “very compute intensive,” and there’s also a limit of 100 queries per month. However, OpenAI already plans to bring it to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users, with Enterprise users to follow. Deep research is also not available yet in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the European Economic Area.
The Practical Applications of ChatGPT's Deep Research Capabilities
Future Prospects
It’s probably too early to tell if these new agentic capabilities in ChatGPT and Google Gemini should make consultants and research assistants worry about their jobs. However, OpenAI sees Deep research as “a significant step toward our broader goal of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), which we have long envisioned as capable of producing novel scientific research.”
