US tech giant OpenAI introduced a ChatGPT tool named “deep research” ahead of important meetings in Tokyo, amid rising competition in the AI sector from China’s DeepSeek chatbot on Monday (today).

OpenAI brought generative AI into the public spotlight with ChatGPT in 2022, stated that its new tool “achieves in minutes what would take a human several hours.”

In a livestreamed video announcement, OpenAI researchers demonstrated how the tool can analyze web search data to recommend ski equipment for a winter vacation in Japan.

“Deep research is OpenAI’s next agent that can do work for you independently – 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,” it said in a statement.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in Tokyo to meet with Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba later on Monday, alongside Masayoshi Son, the head of the Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank Group.

Both SoftBank and OpenAI are involved in the Stargate initiative, which was announced by former US President Donald Trump to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.

Ishiba is expected to travel to Washington for his first in-person meeting with Trump later this week.

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 required.

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.

However, Altman suggested that it would take several years to develop a prototype, according to the Nikkei.

He also mentioned that DeepSeek is “a good model” that underscores the intense competition in AI reasoning technology, although its “capability level isn’t new.”

DeepSeek’s performance has led to numerous claims that it has reverse-engineered the features of leading US technologies, like the AI behind ChatGPT.

Last week, OpenAI cautioned that Chinese companies are actively trying to replicate its advanced AI models, leading to closer collaboration with US authorities.

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