Everywhere you look these days, there it is—some manner of breathlessly hyped new “AI” service that’s, like, totally gonna change your life forever. (Like, totally. For realsies.)
Or so they say. In reality, of course, most of this stuff is far more fallible, limited in utility, and inadvisable to use outside of super-specific scenarios than most tech companies (and self-declared “AI gurus”) would lead you to believe.
But AI, in its current form, isn’t entirely useless. Far from it, in fact: This type of tech can be quite helpful in the right sort of scenario and, critically, if you think about it in the right way—not as an end-all instant answer machine but as a starting point for certain types of specific tasks or info-seeking.
And as we wade our way through a year that’s absolutely overflowing with overwrought AI ballyhoo, I’ve got just the tool for you to sift through that sea and seek out some surprising shiny pearls amid all the overwhelming noise.
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Deep research, done right
So, you’ve probably heard all about ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and the likes, right?
They’re all generative AI chatbots, which means they use a snazzy-sounding word prediction engine to analyze language patterns and answer your questions, among other more ambitious tasks.
🔎 One of their biggest recent advancements is the ability to perform what everyone’s calling “deep research”—a fancy way of saying they’ll dive deep into a topic for you and create a detailed report of info, almost like a custom-made dossier, based on knowledge from all over the web.
Again, I can’t emphasize enough: The info here isn’t infallible. These systems can—and do—get stuff wrong and sometimes even flat-out make up nonsense out of thin air.
🧠 But, as a starting point—especially when they include links to their sources so you can confirm info on your own and use it as an entryway to research as opposed to the final product—it really can save you time and give you a great way to get into a complex topic.
And the tool I want to show to you today makes that feature far more powerful, useful, and also affordable than it’s ever been before.
⌚ It’ll take you 20 seconds to try out for yourself.
➜ It’s called, amusingly, Ithy. (Try saying that 10 times fast!) And all it does, in a nutshell, is bring together the “deep research” tools from a slew of different AI engines—including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini along with Perplexity, Meta AI, and more—into a single streamlined prompt. That means you can use ’em all together to create a single super-report on any subject imaginable.
✅ It couldn’t be much easier to make happen, either:
- First, open up Ithy in any browser, on any device you’re using.
- Type your question or the subject you’re thinking about into its box and tap or click the arrow icon within that same line to get going.
- Select either “Fast,” if you don’t feel like waiting, or “Deep,” if you’ve got time and want this thing to go especially in-depth. (Even the “Fast” path is pretty darn deep, if you ask me.)
- And, well, that’s about it.
Ithy will think for a bit, then serve up an impressively detailed dossier on whatever it is you requested—with info coming from a mix of all those AI engines, combined and seamlessly blended together.
And I mean seriously detailed, too—with all sorts of sections, graphics, FAQs, and external links for original sources so you can do your own reading and see exactly where it got its info.
📌 Here’s a link to the sample report shown here, if you want to look even more closely.
☝️ Now, for the especially cool part: Ithy lets you do all of this free of charge—up to a point. The site gives you five report-creating credits to start, even if you don’t sign in.
Once you create an account (for free), you’ll get 10 credits per month and can optionally then bump up to an unlimited Pro plan—which includes access to the typically pricey pro levels of Gemini and OpenAI—for seven bucks a month, if you go for the annual setup.
But even if you don’t go that route, 10 in-depth reports per month from all the web’s leading AI engines together is a pretty powerful perk to have at your fingertips, without so much as dropping a dime.
- Ithy is entirely web-based—no downloads or installations required.
- It’s free for up to 5 reports total or 10 reports per month, if you create an account—and optionally available in $7-per-month (paid annually) or $20-per-month (paid monthly) plan for its fully featured, limit-free Pro version.
- Like most AI engines, Ithy does use questions submitted to its site as training to further improve its AI systems. The questions are also being shared with the associated third-party AI sites, of course. So you’ll want to think carefully about what you ask and avoid sending anything especially sensitive or personal (but really, it’s designed to answer questions and provide info, so hopefully you wouldn’t be submitting your banking info and Social Security number, anyway!).
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