With Deep Research, that's exactly what the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are doing, utilizing their large language models alongside web searches and reasoning capabilities to become research assistants of sorts.

OpenAI is releasing a new lightweight version of the “Deep Research” feature in ChatGPT, which should be cheaper to run—and that makes it possible for the company to make it available to ChatGPT’s free users.

One of the best ChatGPT tools is Deep Research, but so far, it has required a subscription. OpenAI now offers a lighter version and expanded it to free users.