U.S. tech giant OpenAI on Monday unveiled a ChatGPT tool called "deep research" ahead of high-level meetings in Tokyo, as China's DeepSeek chatbot heats up competition in the AI field.
Artificial intelligence newcomer DeepSeek has sent Silicon Valley into a frenzy, with its high performance and supposed low cost prompting calls for U.S. developers to go faster.
OpenAI, whose ChatGPT fronted 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".
"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.
In a livestreamed video announcement, OpenAI researchers showed how the tool can synthesise web search data to help recommend ski equipment to buy for a snow holiday in Japan.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman is in Tokyo to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba later Monday.
SoftBank and OpenAI are part of the Stargate drive announced by U.S. President Donald Trump to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.
Ishiba is expected to visit Washington to meet Trump for the leaders' first in-person meeting later this week.
On Monday afternoon, Altman and Masayoshi Son, head of Japanese tech investment behemoth SoftBank Group, held a forum in Tokyo with around 500 businesses. Later, they announced plans to form a joint venture -- SB OpenAI Japan -- to boost Japan's AI infrastructure.
The Nikkei business daily reported that this will include building AI data centers 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.
But Altman indicated that it would take several years to unveil a prototype, the Nikkei said.
Altman also told the newspaper that DeepSeek is "a good model" that highlights the serious competition for AI reasoning technology, but that its "capability level isn't new".
DeepSeek's performance has sparked a wave of accusations that it has reverse-engineered the capabilities of leading U.S. technology, such as the AI powering ChatGPT.
Last week OpenAI warned that Chinese companies are actively attempting to replicate its advanced AI models, prompting closer cooperation with U.S. authorities.
© 2025 AFP
8 Comments
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I'veSeenFootage
Never has an industry needed regulations as quickly and as strongly as AI. These idiots are just gleefully racing to humanity's doom.
quercetum
DeepSeek is open AI. OpenAI is closed because why provide it for free when you can profit and lure investors?
Marc Lowe
Japanese media is sensationalizing China's foray into AI. Why fan the coals when just straight reporting would suffice? It is also interesting how announcements always seem to happen ahead of "meetings." Do any other readers get the vibration that these meetings are when bribe amounts are discussed? SoftBank knows how to manipulate media very well and get almost free advertising. Just by hiring a washed up name baseball player they get a huge return on their investment. Hoping there is more substance to their AI than their expired athletes.
SDCA
Ah Son-san, the guy that didn't pull out of Yahoo when it was declining, pretty much lost during the dot com turmoil, invested into a vision fund that has massive failures like Wework, who doesn't have the funds to really go all out and yet he helps:
I respected this man and his intelligence for a while, but nowadays it's hard to see that behind some of the skeptical moves. The Deepseek reveal was a real show and tell from China and it just goes to show what China can do with limited investment. Looks like we are at the start of an AI version of a nuclear arms race.
sakurasuki
Why invite overpriced OpenAI, should invite DeepSeek instead. However things in Japan usually really slow, so trends that happened globally will be received in Japan another year.
WoodyLee
Here is what the future would look like and I hope it happens.
Don't need a smart phone or an Apple watch or any hand held hardware to browse, search, chat, or talk to anyone all you need is a chip or processor that can read your brain orders and demands then go to work and return the data back into your brain, you touch nothing, and maintain nothing.
No DoCoMo, No Softbank, and No AU. you buy the processor or lease it and the rest is history.
TokyoLiving
US henhouse on fire because can't overcome the fact China is the future..
LOL
WoodyLee
"" Never has an industry needed regulations as quickly and as strongly as AI. These idiots are just gleefully racing to humanity's doom. ""
I am afraid it's too late AI is all around us as we read and chat this article, it is the future like it or not and soon our world will be so dependent on it if not already.
Google search is using it and the results are astounding.
No More Influencers, lies, advertisement, and tricks.