OpenAI announces new 'deep research' tool for ChatGPT

US tech giant OpenAI on Monday unveiled a ChatGPT tool called "deep research" ahead of high-level meetings in Tokyo, as China's DeepSeek chatbot heats up competition in the AI field.

Artificial intelligence newcomer DeepSeek has sent Silicon Valley into a frenzy, with some calling its high performance and supposed low cost a wake-up call for US developers.

OpenAI, whose ChatGPT fronted generative AI's emergence into public consciousness in 2022, said its new tool "accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours".

"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," the company said in a statement.

In a livestreamed video, OpenAI researchers showed how the tool can crunch web search data to help recommend ski equipment for a snow holiday in Japan.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman said that deep research, which paid "Pro" ChatGPT users can access 100 times a month, is "compute-intensive and slow".

"But it's the first AI system that can do such a wide variety of complex, valuable tasks," he wrote on social media platform X.

Altman is in Tokyo to meet Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba later Monday along with Masayoshi Son, head of Japanese tech investment behemoth SoftBank Group.

- 'New kind of hardware' -

Altman and Son will also hold a forum on Monday in Tokyo with around 500 businesses at which they are expected to announce plans to boost Japan's AI infrastructure.

The Nikkei business daily reported that this will include building AI data centres and power plants to run them, without specifying the scale of the investment.

SoftBank and OpenAI are part of the Stargate drive announced by US President Donald Trump to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.

Ishiba is expected to visit Washington to meet Trump for the leaders' first in-person meeting later this week.

Separately, Altman told the Nikkei he wants to develop "a new kind of hardware" using artificial intelligence in partnership with Apple's former chief design officer Jony Ive.

But Altman indicated that it would take several years to unveil a prototype, the Nikkei said.

Altman also told the newspaper that DeepSeek is "a good model" that highlights the serious competition for AI reasoning technology, but that its "capability level isn't new".

DeepSeek's performance has sparked a wave of accusations that it has reverse-engineered the capabilities of leading US technology, such as the AI powering ChatGPT.

Last week OpenAI warned that Chinese companies are actively attempting to replicate its advanced AI models, prompting closer cooperation with US authorities.

Some X users compared DeepSeek's so-called "thinking mode" and the time taken for deep research to compile its reports, as well as the similar names.

While OpenAI has not released details of Altman's next movements, media reports said he was expected to travel on Tuesday to Seoul, where he will meet the head of IT conglomerate Kakao.