OpenAI announces new 'deep research' tool for ChatGPT

US tech giant OpenAI on Monday unveiled a ChatGPT tool called "deep research" that can produce detailed reports, as China's DeepSeek chatbot heats up competition in the artificial intelligence field.

The company made the announcement in Tokyo, where OpenAI chief Sam Altman also trumpeted a new joint venture with tech investor SoftBank Group to offer advanced artificial intelligence services to businesses.

AI 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 led 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, analyse, and synthesise hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst," the company said in a statement.

Altman said on social media platform X that deep research, which paid "Pro" ChatGPT users can access 100 times a month, was "slow" and required a lot of computing power, but he was also bullish.

"My very approximate vibe is that it can do a single-digit percentage of all economically valuable tasks in the world, which is a wild milestone," Altman wrote in another X post.

One commentator, entrepreneur Michel Levy Provencal, said the new tool could mean "very big problems ahead for consultants".

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.

Altman and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son met Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Monday evening, and discussed extending "Stargate into Japan", Son told reporters afterwards.

"We want to create the cutting-edge AI infrastructure -- what I mean by that is the world's biggest, cutting-edge AI data centres," Son said, without giving further details.

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

At a business forum held Monday afternoon, Son announced a new joint venture equally split between SoftBank Group and OpenAI.

Holding a purple crystal ball, the Japanese tycoon outlined the services of a new AI product called Cristal, which can crunch system data, reports, emails and meetings for firms.

A joint statement said SoftBank would "spend $3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI's solutions across its group companies".

The venture "will serve as a springboard for introducing AI agents tailored to the unique needs of Japanese enterprises while setting a model for global adoption", it said.

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.

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

When asked if he was considering taking legal action, Altman said on Monday that "we have no plans to sue DeepSeek right now".

"DeepSeek is certainly an impressive model, but we believe we will continue to push the frontier and deliver great products, so we're happy to have another competitor," he also reiterated.

OpenAI says rivals are using a process known as distillation in which developers creating smaller models learn from larger ones by copying their behaviour and decision-making patterns -- similar to a student learning from a teacher.

The company is itself facing multiple accusations of intellectual property violations, primarily related to the use of copyrighted materials in training its generative AI models.

While OpenAI has not confirmed Altman's next movements, media reports said he would travel on Tuesday to Seoul.

A spokesperson for South Korean IT conglomerate Kakao told AFP it would on Tuesday announce its "collaboration with OpenAI" but did not confirm whether Altman would be there.