In a significant development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), OpenAI, the U.S. tech behemoth, has announced the launch of a new tool for its ChatGPT, named deep research. This announcement comes ahead of high-level meetings scheduled in Tokyo, and amidst the rising competition in the AI field, particularly from China’s DeepSeek chatbot.
DeepSeek, a newcomer in the AI arena, has been causing quite a stir in Silicon Valley. Its high performance and purported low cost have led to calls for U.S. developers to accelerate their pace. OpenAI, which brought generative AI into the public eye with its ChatGPT in 2022, has responded to this call with the unveiling of deep research.
The new tool is designed to perform tasks that would take a human several hours, in just tens of minutes. As per OpenAI’s statement, Deep research is OpenAI’s next agent that can do work for you independently — you give it a prompt, and ChatGPT will find, analyze, and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst.
OpenAI’s Strategic Moves in Tokyo
During a live video announcement, OpenAI researchers demonstrated the tool’s capabilities by showing how it can synthesize web search data to recommend ski equipment for a snow holiday in Japan. This demonstration highlighted the tool’s potential to revolutionize the way we conduct research and make decisions.
OpenAI’s chief, Sam Altman, is currently in Tokyo for a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. This meeting comes as part of the Stargate drive, an initiative announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, which aims to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States. OpenAI and SoftBank are key players in this initiative.
In addition to his meeting with Altman, Prime Minister Ishiba is expected to visit Washington for his first in-person meeting with President Trump later this week. This meeting underscores the growing importance of AI in global politics and economics.
Joint Venture and Future Plans
On Monday afternoon, Altman and Masayoshi Son, the head of Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank Group, held a forum in Tokyo with around 500 businesses. Following the forum, they announced plans to form a joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, to bolster Japan’s AI infrastructure.
According to the Nikkei business daily, this joint venture will involve building AI data centers and power plants to run them. However, the scale of the investment required has not been specified.
In a separate conversation with the Nikkei, Altman expressed his desire to develop a new kind of hardware using AI, in partnership with Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive. However, he indicated that it would take several years to unveil a prototype.
Altman also commented on the competition from DeepSeek, describing it as a good model that highlights the serious competition for AI reasoning technology. However, he also noted that its capability level isn’t new. This statement suggests that while DeepSeek has made a splash, it has not necessarily brought anything new to the table.
DeepSeek’s performance has led to allegations that it has reverse-engineered the capabilities of leading U.S. technology, such as the AI powering ChatGPT. In response to these allegations, OpenAI warned last week that Chinese companies are actively attempting to replicate its advanced AI models, prompting closer cooperation with U.S. authorities.