OpenAI unveils AI tool that can do research online

OpenAI unveiled the new tool, called Deep Research, with a demonstration on YouTube on Sunday, days after showing the technology to lawmakers, policymakers and other officials in Washington.

“It can do complex research tasks that might take a person anywhere from 30 minutes to 30 days,” Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer, said at the event in Washington. By contrast, Deep Research can accomplish such tasks in five to 30 minutes, depending on the complexity.

Artificial intelligence researchers call this kind of technology an AI agent. While chatbots can answer questions, write poems and generate images, agents can use other software and services on the internet.

During the briefing on Capitol Hill, Weil showed the technology gathering information about Albert Einstein. He asked the tool to put together a detailed report about the physicist for a hypothetical Senate staff member preparing for a congressional hearing where Einstein is a nominee for U.S. secretary of energy.

In addition to providing information about Einstein’s background and personality, it generated five questions that a senator could ask the physicist to determine whether he was the right person for the job.

“It can surf the web and understand text and images and PDFs,” Weil said. “And it can do this recursively. It can do one search and that leads to other searches and then it can synthesize all the information it has learned.”

Weil said that the reports generated by the tool included citations showing where the information was found. But AI technologies like this can still get things wrong or even make up information — a phenomenon that AI researchers call “hallucination.” This may mean that it provides incorrect citations.

Still, Weil argued that the tool could help the United States accelerate economic growth. He added that the tool would be particularly useful for people in fields including finance, science and law.

OpenAI said that, beginning Sunday, Deep Research would be available to anyone who is subscribed to ChatGPT Pro, a $200-a-month service that provides access to all of the company’s latest tools.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.