OpenAI, the prominent US technology firm, introduced a new ChatGPT feature called “deep research” on Monday, coinciding with significant discussions taking place in Tokyo. This launch comes as China’s DeepSeek chatbot intensifies the competition in the AI landscape.
The emergence of DeepSeek has stirred excitement in Silicon Valley, with its impressive capabilities and anticipated affordability urging US developers to accelerate their efforts.
OpenAI, which brought generative AI into the spotlight with ChatGPT in 2022, described its latest tool as one that can achieve in mere minutes what would typically require hours of human effort.
According to a statement, “Deep research is OpenAI’s next agent that operates autonomously for you—simply provide a prompt, and ChatGPT will scour, analyze, and compile information from hundreds of online sources to generate a detailed report akin to that of a research analyst.”
During a livestreamed announcement, OpenAI researchers demonstrated how the tool can aggregate web search results to suggest ski gear for a winter trip to Japan.
OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, is in Tokyo for a meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, alongside Masayoshi Son, the leader of the influential Japanese tech investment firm SoftBank Group.
Both SoftBank and OpenAI are involved in the Stargate initiative, which was unveiled by former US President Donald Trump, aiming to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the United States.
Prime Minister Ishiba is anticipated to travel to Washington later this week for his first in-person meeting with Trump.
On Monday afternoon, Altman and Son are set to host a forum in Tokyo, gathering approximately 500 businesses where they are anticipated to reveal initiatives aimed at enhancing Japan’s AI infrastructure.
According to the Nikkei business daily, this initiative will involve the construction of AI data centers and the necessary power plants to support them, although the report did not detail the investment scale involved.
In a separate conversation with the Nikkei, Altman expressed his ambition to create “a new kind of hardware” that leverages artificial intelligence, collaborating with Jony Ive, Apple’s former chief design officer.
However, Altman noted that it may take several years before a prototype is ready for presentation, as reported by the Nikkei.
Additionally, Altman mentioned that DeepSeek serves as “a good model” illustrating the intense competition in AI reasoning technology, but he remarked that its “capability level isn’t new.”
The performance of DeepSeek has led to numerous allegations that it has reverse-engineered the functionalities of leading U.S. technologies, including the AI that powers ChatGPT.
