Perplexity has recently announced the release of its advanced AI research tool, Deep Research, marking a significant milestone in the realm of AI-powered data analysis. This development, unveiled on Friday, joins the ranks of similar features introduced by industry giants such as Google and OpenAI.
In December, Google unveiled a comparable feature for its Gemini AI platform, while OpenAI launched its own research agent earlier this month. Interestingly, all three companies have opted to name their features identically as Deep Research, underscoring a shared vision within the AI sector.
The primary objective of these tools is to deliver more comprehensive and in-depth answers, complete with real citations, tailored for professional use cases. This represents a significant enhancement over the typical responses provided by consumer chatbots. In a recent blog post, Perplexity highlighted that its Deep Research tool “excels at a range of expert-level tasks—from finance and marketing to product research.”
The Perplexity Deep Research feature is currently accessible on the web, with plans to extend its availability to Mac, iOS, and Android applications soon. Users can activate this feature by selecting “Deep Research” from a drop-down menu when submitting queries in Perplexity. The tool then generates a detailed report, which can be exported as a PDF or shared as a Perplexity Page.
In terms of functionality, Perplexity’s Deep Research tool "iteratively searches, reads documents, and reasons about what to do next," refining its research plan as it gains more insights into the subject areas. This process is reportedly “similar to how a human might research a new topic.”
Perplexity also showcased its performance in Humanity’s Last Exam, an AI benchmarking test featuring expert-level questions across various academic disciplines. The Deep Research tool achieved a score of 21.1%, surpassing most other models like Gemini Thinking (6.2%), Grok-2 (3.8%), and OpenAI’s GPT-4o (3.3%), although it fell short of OpenAI’s Deep Research score of 26.6%.
While OpenAI's Deep Research tool requires a $200-per-month Pro subscription (with plans for expansion to other subscription tiers), Perplexity offers its Deep Research feature for free. Non-subscribers have a limited number of queries per day, whereas paying subscribers enjoy unlimited queries.
Moreover, Perplexity's Deep Research tool is noted for its speed, completing most tasks in under three minutes compared to the 5 to 30 minutes required by OpenAI's Deep Research.
When comparing various deep research products, Perplexity provided an overview of the different technologies, pricing models, and performance across diverse use cases and subject matters, complete with links to articles on each feature. The key distinctions are as follows:
Perplexity AI excels in speed and accessibility for casual researchers. OpenAI dominates in analytical depth for enterprise applications. Google integrates most seamlessly with existing productivity ecosystems.