Deep Research Without ChatGPT Pro

How to get a digital researcher without the $200/mo subscription

With the release of Deep Research, many people have wondered if it's time to subscribe to ChatGPT Pro. And the answer isn’t simple.

OpenAI doesn't have a trial period, some startups created competitors, and given the quality of actual AI models, it doesn't seem that necessary. On the other hand, Deep Research has shown impressive results, and some companies have already adopted it in their processes.

So I propose to break it down together today.

In this issue:

• What's special about Deep Research

• Alternatives from enthusiasts and academics

• How to use free tools & prompts for fast AI research

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Deep Research Is Not the Holy Grail

Despite the big hype around Deep Research (as if it were a next-generation AI), if you look closely, everything turns out to be quite familiar. The first thing to do is realize that we're not talking about a unique solution but just a good variation of ChatGPT.

Deep Research was designed as a digital analyst and researcher that offers users up to 100 queries monthly. Its target audience is entrepreneurs, analysts, and scientists. The model works by browsing the web and processing different types of information to generate reports on a given topic.

All with citations that are important when verifying information.

Its workflow looks like this (technicalities aside):

1. Receiving and refining a prompt with a request (our usual way of interacting with chatbots)

2. Reasoning about the sequence of actions (now available for all users)

3. Systematic research for relevant information on the web (also free for all)

4. Synthesizing the obtained data and generating a response in the form of a structured report (familiar receiving a response from a chatbot)

The difference here is a modified o3-mini model (the regular version can be accessed with a ChatGPT Plus subscription). AI uses this model to dive deeper and collect data from various sources. According to OpenAI, generating a single report takes between 5 and 30 minutes. The speed depends on the complexity of the study and how deeply the information needs to be analyzed.

And I don't mean to downplay the merits of OpenAI. However, as a product, Deep Research is a compilation of existing approaches based on a specific trained model.

That's why other developers have been able to create so many alternatives quickly.

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Alternative #1: Open Deep Research

I mentioned Open Deep Research in a previous post, but I can't help but do it again. It is one of the most affordable and high-quality alternatives for the new OpenAI agent.

Open Deep Research is a community-driven project developed and maintained by contributors at Hugging Face, including its co-founder. It aims to reproduce and extend OpenAI’s capabilities in an open and transparent way.

Due to its open-source nature, it has several advantages over Deep Research:

• You can deploy it locally on your PC

• It has a demo version that is available on Hugging Face Spaces

• Only the API Key is required of you, and there is no subscription.

How to Try It

Hugging Face Spaces:

• You can try Open Deep Research directly through a Hugging Face Spaces. The project’s demo is available online, where you can enter your research queries and watch the agent’s multi-step process unfold.

GitHub Repository:

• For developers interested in running it locally or customizing the tool, the code is available on GitHub.

The accompanying blog post on Hugging Face’s website provides a detailed guide on setting up the environment and launching an agent instance.

But if you've already played around with the demo version but don't want to spend money on API Key, there's also a completely free option.

Spoiler: Who knows how to research, if not academics and university staff.