“Deep research” is emerging as a model trend, with Perplexity’s Deep Research launching less than three weeks after OpenAI unveiled its own ChatGPT deep research agent, which followed Google’s similar Gemini feature. As its name implies, deep research is a productivity tool, designed to save time by having an AI agent scour materials, compiling data and analysis. Perplexity’s Deep Research “performs dozens of searches, reads hundreds of sources, and reasons through the material to autonomously deliver a comprehensive report,” across topics ranging “from finance and marketing to product research,” the company says.

“The goal is to provide more in-depth answers with real citations for more professional use cases, compared to what you’d get from a consumer chatbot,” writes TechCrunch, calling it a freemium service — “non-subscribers get an unspecified-but-limited number of queries per day, while paying subscribers get unlimited queries.”

The Gemini Deep Research agent comes with a $20 per month Google One AI Premium subscription, while OpenAI Deep Research requires a $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription. Despite the pricing, Perplexity’s Deep Research tool “seems to perform more quickly, completing most tasks in under three minutes compared to 5 to 30 minutes for OpenAI Deep Research,” TechCrunch reports.

To try it, go to perplexity.ai and select “Deep Research” from the mode selector in the search box before submitting a query.

“Perplexity has shattered the AI market’s status quo today by launching Deep Research, a tool that generates comprehensive research reports in minutes and opens advanced AI capabilities to users at a fraction of typical enterprise costs,” notes VentureBeat.

Perplexity touts Deep Research’s “high benchmarks on Humanity’s Last Exam.” The test — introduced just this month — is “designed as the final closed-ended academic test of human knowledge,” writes AIM Research (in a discussion of how existing metrics may represent “a dangerous oversimplification of what it means to be ‘intelligent.’”)

The tool is available on the Web now, and will soon come to iOS, Android, and Mac, the company says.