NLP Lineage

2 February 2025 · Representation and retrieval

Deep research

Deep research

OpenAI

Date
2 February 2025
What the date marks
Product release
Kind
Product
Organisation
OpenAI
Access
subscription
Threads
In the guided tour
Chapter 13. Models that act
Learning phases
7. Agents

Too recent for its influence to be judged: no later milestone in the data descends from it yet. How levels are decided

Figures quoted here are reported by the organisation that built it, not independently verified.

Read the primary source (openai.com)

Full summary in progress. Until then, this page shows the milestone's record from the research data.

What it changed

Before it

Search-augmented answers came back in seconds from a handful of pages.

The problem

Real research means dozens of sources, cross-checking and a written synthesis, which does not fit in one turn.

What it introduced

A reasoning model given browsing and many minutes to work, producing a cited report.

Why it matters

It made long-running autonomous research a mainstream product feature, copied by every major lab within months.

What modern models inherit

Agents that run for minutes rather than seconds.

What came next

Equivalent modes in Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.

Before and after

The milestones it descends from, and the milestones that descend from it. Work developed alongside it is not counted. Weak links are left out unless you include them.

Before: where it came from

Deep research has 23 documented ancestors across 7 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 11 turning points among them.

Deep research has 23 documented ancestors across 7 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

Deep research has 43 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 12 turning points among them.

Deep research has 43 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 8 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

  1. 2025Deep researchThis milestone.
  2. 2025o3 releasedDeep research was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  3. 2024o3 announcedo3 released succeeded thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  4. 2024o1 Turning pointo3 released built directly on thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  5. 2023Function callingo3 released was influenced by thisChapter 13. Models that act
  6. 2022Chain of thought Turning pointo1 was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  7. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointChain of thought was influenced by thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  8. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-3 was influenced by thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  9. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  10. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  11. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  12. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  13. 2017Transformer Turning pointGPT-2 built directly on this
    Sparse Transformer built directly on this
    Scaling laws built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  14. 2016Layer normGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  15. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  16. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointGPT-1 was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  17. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  18. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  19. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  20. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  21. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  22. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  23. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  24. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  1. 2025Deep researchThis milestone.
  2. 2025o3 releasedDeep research was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  3. 2024o3 announcedo3 released succeeded thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  4. 2024o1 Turning pointo3 released built directly on thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  5. 2024Test-time computeo3 announced was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  6. 2023Function callingo3 released was influenced by thisChapter 13. Models that act
  7. 2023Process supervisiono1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  8. 2023Tree of thoughtsTest-time compute was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  9. 2023ToolformerFunction calling was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  10. 2022ReActFunction calling was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  11. 2022STaRo1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  12. 2022Self-consistencyTest-time compute built directly on thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  13. 2022Chain of thought Turning pointo1 was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  14. 2021WebGPTDeep research was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  15. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointWebGPT built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  16. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointWebGPT built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  17. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-3 was influenced by thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  18. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  19. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  20. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  21. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  22. 2019Transformer-XLSparse Transformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  23. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  24. 2018ELMoGPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  25. 2018ULMFiTGPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  26. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  27. 2017RLHF originRLHF for summarisation built directly on this
    o1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  28. 2017Transformer Turning pointGPT-2 built directly on this
    Sparse Transformer built directly on this
    Scaling laws built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  29. 2017ConvS2STransformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  30. 2016Layer normGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  31. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  32. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointGPT-1 was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  33. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  34. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  35. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  36. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  37. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  38. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  39. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  40. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  41. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  42. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  43. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on this
    ELMo built directly on this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  44. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability

After: what it led to

No documented descendants are recorded for Deep research without weak links.

No documented descendants are recorded for Deep research without weak links.

No recorded descendants are recorded for Deep research.

No recorded descendants are recorded for Deep research.

Direct links and their sources

Where it came from

Influenced by

What it led to

None recorded in the sources used.