Deep Research: OpenAI’s Newest Feature That Makes Niche Research a Breeze

Key Takeaways

• OpenAI's new Deep Research tool offers an advanced research assistant powered by the latest ChatGPT o3 model.
• It performs fast, in-depth research across niche topics, uncovering hard-to-find information and generating comprehensive, citation-backed reports.
• The release of Deep Research follows China's DeepSeek, intensifying competition in the AI research space and driving innovations in the industry.

Kevin Weil, CPO at OpenAI, took to LinkedIn to announce the newest agent of the AI giant that allows users to do extensive research on any topic. It's basically a search engine on steroids.

It's like having your own personal research assistant, and it's (unbelievably) good. - Kevin Weil.

This feature is expected to allow you to research complex questions and perform tasks that could've taken you anywhere from a few hours to 30 days in a matter of just a few minutes (varying anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes).

How Deep Research Works?

Powered by the most advanced model of ChatGPT yet, OpenAI o3, Deep Research can independently and exhaustively search the web, synthesizing large amounts of information to get to the depths of any niche you present to it.

After searching the web, it creates a comprehensive report with documented outputs and clear citations that you can circle back to in case of doubts or curiosity. You can request a competitive analysis between 2 topics or a personalized report from it as per your requirements.

Kevin Weil recommended it's best suited for researching a niche, as the program is pretty good at digging up pages and websites that aren't that easily on the web while scrolling.

Deep Research could be a game changer for students, SEO experts, medical experts, or any professional where depth and detail are critical, if it lives up to the claims made.

Public Reactions to Deep Research

Several users commented on the LinkedIn post expressing their views after trying the feature firsthand. Here's one of the many:

We used it this morning to brainstorm ideas for AI benchmarks for foundational literacy, building on the need to identify the tasks a teacher does at each step. It's very good. - A LinkedIn user

Overall, users seemed pretty excited to try out Deep Research, but since the feature has just rolled out, a few factual errors and lagging was experienced by some users. Hopefully, with time these minor issues will get fixed.

How to Use OpenAI Deep Research

To use the feature, you simply have to select the Deep Research option in the text composer and the searches will be run inside ChatGPT itself. As always, you can attach documents and spreadsheets to support and better explain your question.

While the accuracy of any AI is still not at 100%, Deep Research claims to be better at fact-checking and reliability. However, of course, if it's something important, a quick human check is never a bad idea.

It's worth noting that the Deep Research feature is currently available on the premium ChatGPT plan.

OpenAI Comes Out All Guns Blazing

The timing of this update is interesting - although not surprising - as it comes right after China's DeepSeek shook the foundation of the AI industry with its performance and budget, heating up competition like never before.

Moreover, OpenAI launched a special ChatGPT Enterprise variant for the US government just days earlier. It looks like OpenAI is eager to demonstrate its dominance after the DeepSeek saga.

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