Yesterday Google made some huge AI announcements, including Gemini 2, AI agents, and a prototype personal assistant. There is a LOT to unpack, but for the purposes of this communication, I'm focusing on the new Google Deep Research mode now available in Gemini.
For those who sign up (or are already signed up) for our workshop tomorrow, "Research & AI: Principles and Practices for Using AI Tools," we're adding a bonus a one-hour recorded in-depth look (available early next week) at Google Deep Research. We hope you'll consider joining us.
More on Google Deep Research:
As Ethan Mollick has said, the cost of getting to know AI is "at least three sleepless nights." I've personally had more than three nights where I've been in deep conversation with one or large language models, but last night was the first time with Google Gemini. I couldn't stop crafting research prompts, getting responses, then refining the prompts.
In a (hyphenated) word, Google Deep Research is game-changing.
I certainly have felt similarly about Google NotebookLM's podcast generator (called "audio overviews"), but this is a much more robust tool and intellectually just as captivating. It seems to take from the playbook of Perplexity.ai (my go-to AI tool for the last several weeks, since it is unparalleled for being able to ask pragmatic or technical questions and then getting researched responses with links to original sources) and ChatGPT's canvas feature (an updating document-like response rather than length repetitions of slightly altered updates). Like Perplexity, it shows you what sites it's searching, plus gives a plan of action for it's research that you approve or modify.
We'll talk more about this tomorrow and next week, but to note: this is a part of Google's paid Gemini Advanced model, and it's going to have huge implications for how we think about student research projects and how we assign and evaluate research work.
Sample Headline Quotes Today (see here):
- Google’s ‘Deep Research’ AI can write a college-level paper in minutes
- I just saw the future of the web — Google's new Deep Research tool unleashes swarms of AI agents to do in-depth research for you
- Google's Gemini Deep Research tool is here to answer your most complicated questions
- Google's Gemini Can Now Do Research in Minutes That Would Take a Human Hours
- Google Gemini’s New ‘Deep Research’ Tool Is Great
From Google's Blog:
Doing research online isn’t always easy. Imagine you’re a grad student preparing for your upcoming robotics presentation. You want to get smart on autonomous vehicle sensor trends and understand how different technologies stack up, along with what’s on the horizon. A project like this might take hours of research and cross-referencing a sea of open tabs, that is if you can even find that link you know you put somewhere…
Under your supervision, Deep Research does the hard work for you. After you enter your question, it creates a multi-step research plan for you to either revise or approve. Once you approve, it begins deeply analyzing relevant information from across the web on your behalf.
Over the course of a few minutes, Gemini continuously refines its analysis, browsing the web the way you do: searching, finding interesting pieces of information and then starting a new search based on what it’s learned. It repeats this process multiple times and, once complete, generates a comprehensive report of the key findings, which you can export into a Google Doc. It’s neatly organized with links to the original sources, connecting you to relevant websites and businesses or organizations you might not have found otherwise so you can easily dive deeper to learn more. If you have follow up questions for Gemini or want to refine the report, just ask! That’s hours of research at your fingertips in just minutes.
Earlier this year, we shared our vision of building more agentic capabilities into our products; Deep Research is the first feature in Gemini to bring that vision to life. We’ve built a new agentic system that uses Google's expertise of finding relevant information on the web to direct Gemini's browsing and research. This, coupled with the Gemini model’s advanced reasoning capabilities and our 1M token context window, creates comprehensive reports with helpful, easy-to-read insights.
Deep Research is the perfect tool if you’re an entrepreneur launching a small business and want to quickly gather a competitor analysis and recommendations for suitable locations, or if you’re a marketer researching recent AI-powered marketing campaigns to benchmark for 2025 planning.
Deep Research is rolling out today in Gemini Advanced (starting in English) on desktop and mobile web, and will be available in the mobile app in early 2025. To get started, toggle the model drop-down to “Gemini 1.5 Pro with Deep Research” and enter your research question.
Again, we'll do a deep dive on this next week as a bonus for tomorrow's Research & AI session.
Cheers,
Steve
