Openai reveals new AI agent for research

A week ago, Openai released a tool that can go online to shop in groceries or book a restaurant reservation. Now it offers AI technology that can collect information from all over the Internet and synthesize it in brief reports.

Openai revealed the new tool, called Deep Research, with a demonstration on YouTube Sunday, days after showing the technology to legislators, decision makers and other Washington officials.

“It can perform complex research tasks that can take a person anywhere from 30 minutes to 30 days,” said Kevin Weil, Openai’s Chief Product Officer, at the event in Washington. In contrast, deep research can perform such tasks of five to 30 minutes, depending on the complexity.

Artificial intelligence scientists 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. This can involve everything from ordering dinner via Doordash to synthesize information from all over the Internet.

During the briefing of Capitol Hill, Mr. Weil technology that collected information about Albert Einstein. He asked the tool to put together a detailed report on the physicist for a hypothetical Senate employee preparing for a congressional hearing in which Einstein is a nominee for American energy secretary.

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

“It can surf the web and understand text and pictures and PDFs,” Mr. Weil. “And it can make this recursive. It can do a search and it leads to other searches, and then it can synthesize all the information it has learned. “

Mr. Weil said the reports generated by the tool included quotes 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 scientists call “hallucination.” This may mean that it gives incorrect quotes.

Openai said the tool may be struggling to distinguish authoritative information from rumors and that it often failed to convey when it was uncertain about the information it provided.

Still argued Mr. Weil for the tool to help the United States accelerate economic growth. He added that the tool would be particularly useful for people in areas such as economics, science and law.

(The New York Times has sued Openai and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement related to AI systems. Openai and Microsoft have denied these claims.)

Openai said that on Sunday, deep research would be available to anyone subscribed to Chatgpt Pro, a $ 200 a month service providing access to all the company’s latest tools. It also plans to offer the tool via its other paid services.

The tool is based on the same technology that drives chatgpt. This technology is what AI scientists call a neural network – a mathematical system that can learn skills by analyzing data.

In recent months, Openai has developed versions of the technology that can “resonate” through tasks, by determining through sample and mistakes what actions to take. Deep research is based on the company’s latest reasoning technology, Openai O3.