ChatGPT's Deep Research tool can now output detailed PDFs - and I'm impressed

OpenAI

OpenAI's agentic AI Deep probe tool, launched successful February, tin hunt the web and output a elaborate study wrong 5-30 minutes, accomplishing a task that would instrumentality a idiosyncratic respective hours. That useful instrumentality conscionable got adjacent handier.

Also: How to usage ChatGPT freely without giving up your privateness - with 1 elemental trick

Output arsenic a PDF

On Monday, OpenAI announced that users tin present output their Deep Research reports arsenic PDFs that see each the report's elements, including tables, images, sources, and linked citations. Creating the PDF is easy: All users person to bash is pat the "download arsenic PDF" enactment astatine the apical of the report, arsenic seen successful the video below. 

The diagnostic rolled retired to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers, and is coming soon to Enterprise and Edu users. The afloat mentation of Deep Research is disposable lone to paid subscribers, but escaped users person entree to a lightweight mentation that delivers shorter responses. 

Also: I tested ChatGPT's Deep Research against Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok AI to spot which is best

Deep Research is an particularly adjuvant diagnostic for moving professionals and students arsenic it helps them behaviour affluent investigation of a taxable with minimal work. However, successful galore of those cases, you would privation to stock the findings of your probe with your squad oregon colleagues. That's erstwhile exporting the AI's enactment to a neatly formatted PDF comes successful handy; it enables everyone to easy entree the aforesaid information, careless of whether oregon not they usage ChatGPT themselves. 

Trying the export PDF option

I tested the PDF-creating diagnostic myself to spot conscionable however utile it was. As a ChatGPT Plus user, each I had to bash was participate my punctual and click the Deep Research fastener connected the hunt bar. The taxable of my study was based connected a caller find I made: "I would similar a elaborate study connected the interaction of sniffing connected walks connected a dog's health."

As portion of the accustomed process, ChatGPT asked a mates of follow-up questions, defining precisely what I wanted the contents of the study to showcase. Then, erstwhile I answered the follow-up questions, the AI visited 22 sources, made 99 searches, and produced the study successful 9 minutes. 

When I expanded the report, I was instantly presented with the "Download arsenic PDF" enactment adjacent to the "Share link" enactment astatine the apical of the report. The PDF was nicely formatted and intelligibly labeled with subheads delineating abstracted sections, citations, footnotes, photos, and ChatGPT's logo. I was amazed to spot that adjacent the footnotes had clickable links to beryllium redirected to. I included immoderate screenshots of the PDF beneath to springiness you an idea. 

Generated via ChatGPT by Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET

Alternatives

Although this diagnostic is caller to ChatGPT, immoderate different AI chatbots already connection the aforesaid oregon akin functionality. For example, you tin usage Google Gemini's Deep Research diagnostic (yes, it's virtually named the aforesaid thing) to make a report, and past you tin export that study to Google Docs. 

Also: Google's 'I'm feeling lucky' fastener mightiness soon beryllium replaced by AI mode

You tin besides usage Perplexity's Deep Research diagnostic to export a PDF akin to that produced by ChatGPT. However, erstwhile comparing ChatGPT's Deep Research against the probe features successful Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok AI, ZDNET found ChatGPT to beryllium the wide winner. 

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's genitor company, filed an April 2025 suit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights successful grooming and operating its AI systems.)

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