OpenAI introduces lightweight version of Deep Research tool: What is new

OpenAI says that cost-effective version of Deep research has been optimised for speed and efficiency

OpenAI is rolling out a lightweight version of its Deep Research tool for users, saying the cost-effective version will give shorter responses while maintaining “depth and quality”.

 

The artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, the popular chatbot, said the tool is powered by the newly launched o4-mini reasoning model. OpenAI Pro subscribers will get 250 Deep Research queries per day. Team, Plus, Enterprise and Edu users will get 25 queries per day. Free users will get five queries.

 

OpenAI said the ChatGPT’s lightweight version of Deep Research will come to Enterprise and educational users by the end of next week, having ith the same usage levels as Team users.

 

“The lightweight version of deep research is powered by a version of OpenAI o4-mini and is nearly as intelligent as the deep research people already know and love, while being significantly cheaper to serve,” said OpenAI on X (formerly Twitter).

  “Responses will typically be shorter while maintaining the depth and quality you’ve come to expect,” it said.

 

OpenAI said once query limits for the original version of Deep Research are reached, users will be automatically sent to the lightweight version.

What is Deep Research

  Deep Research began as an AI agent introduced by Google and expanded later when OpenAI released a more advanced version in February. Since then, several companies have launched similar tools under the same or slightly different names.

  There are lists of chatbots which are capable of deep research or deep search include Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and Copilot.