OpenAI Introduces Deep Research: A New AI Agent for In-Depth Research

Overview of Deep Research

OpenAI is announcing a new AI "agent" designed to help people conduct in-depth, complex research using ChatGPT, the company’s AI-powered chatbot platform. Appropriately enough, it’s called deep research.

Purpose and Target Audience

OpenAI said in a blog post published Sunday that this new capability was designed for "people who do intensive knowledge work in areas like finance, science, policy, and engineering and need thorough, precise, and reliable research." It could also be useful for anyone making "purchases that typically require careful research, like cars, appliances, and furniture."

How Deep Research Works

Basically, ChatGPT deep research is intended for instances where you don’t just want a quick answer or summary, but instead need to assiduously consider information from multiple websites and other sources.

Availability and Limitations

OpenAI said it’s making deep research available to ChatGPT Pro users today, limited to 100 queries per month, with support for Plus. According to OpenAI, the deep research model came in way ahead of Gemini Thinking (6.2%), Grok-2 (3.8%), and OpenAI’s own GPT-4o (3.3%).

However, OpenAI notes that ChatGPT deep research has limitations, sometimes making mistakes and incorrect inferences. Deep research may struggle to distinguish authoritative information from rumors, the company said, and often fails to convey when it’s uncertain about something — and it can also make formatting errors in reports and citations.

Comparison to Similar Features

For anyone worried about the impact of generative AI on students, or on anyone trying to find information online, this type of in-depth, well-cited output probably sounds more appealing than a deceptively simple chatbot summary with no citations. But we’ll see whether most users will actually subject the output to real analysis and double-checking, or if they simply treat it as a more professional-looking text to copy-paste.

Interestingly, Google actually announced a similar AI feature with the exact same name less than two months ago.