OpenAI claims the tool represents a significant step toward its overarching goal of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) that matches (or surpasses) human performance. It says that what takes the tool "tens of minutes" would take a human many hours. In response to a single query, such as "Draw me up a competitive analysis between streaming platforms," Deep Research will search the web, analyze the information it encounters, and compile a detailed report that cites its sources. It's also able to draw from files uploaded by users. OpenAI developed Deep Research using the same "chain of thought" reinforcement-learning methods it used to create its o1 multistep reasoning model. But while o1 was designed to focus primarily on mathematics, coding, or other STEM-based tasks, Deep Research can tackle a far broader range of subjects.