🔗 OpenAI rolls out a ‘lightweight’ version of its ChatGPT deep research tool

OpenAI is bringing a new “lightweight” version of its ChatGPT deep research tool, […]

The new lightweight deep research, which will also come to free ChatGPT users starting today, is powered by a version of OpenAI’s o4-mini model,

Research, with various level of depth and paired with more of less intelligent planning and reasoning has now become table stakes.

All of this within a matter of weeks. When DeepSeek released R1 in January, it took Perplexity.ai mere days to implement it in its research function. But now, I already hear folks like Dave Shapiro saying that they changed their workflow and use o3 or o4-mini high instead of the longer taking deep research in most cases. “I canceled my Perplexity subscription after paying for about two years.”

You would think that Google must have a huge advantage, combining search and genAI, but Google is at the same time the least interested to disrupt itself too quickly. Or how should that work? According to Gooogle’s last earnings call, they grew ad revenue by 10% YoY and also, at the same time, “For AI Overviews overall, we continue to see monetization at approximately the same rate” (Schindler).

So, more people use Google search. 1.5 billion got served AI Overviews (which you can’t opt out of). And all of it is growing.

But then OpenAI also claims all that user growth and search – as probably does Perplexity still.

They must really have grown the pie, or cherry-picking their reported numbers. :shru