News: 0180667170

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OpenAI Releases Prism, a Claude Code-Like App For Scientific Research (engadget.com)

(Tuesday January 27, 2026 @10:30PM (BeauHD) from the built-for-scientists dept.)


OpenAI has [1]launched Prism, a free scientific research app that [2]aims to do for scientific writing what coding agents did for programming . Engadget reports:

> Prism builds on [3]Crixet , a cloud-based LaTeX platform the company is announcing it acquired today. For the uninitiated, [4]LaTeX is a typesetting system for formatting scientific documents and journals. Nearly the entire scientific community relies on LaTeX, but it can make some tasks, such as drawing diagrams through TikZ commands, time-consuming to do. Beyond that, LaTeX is just one of the software tools a scientist might turn to when preparing to publish their research.

>

> That's where Prism comes into the picture. Like Crixet before it, the app offers robust LaTeX editing and a built-in AI assistant. Where previously it was Crixet's own Chirp agent, now it's GPT-5.2 Thinking. OpenAI's model can help with more than just formatting journals -- in a press demo, an OpenAI employee used it to find and incorporate scientific literature that was relevant to the paper they were working on, with GPT-5.2 automating the process of writing the bibliography. [...] Later in the same demo, the OpenAI employee used Prism to generate a lesson plan for a graduate course on general relativity, as well as a set of problems for students to solve. OpenAI envisions these features helping scientists and professors spend less time on the more tedious tasks in their professions.



[1] https://openai.com/prism/

[2] https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-releases-prism-a-claude-code-like-app-for-scientific-research-180000454.html

[3] https://crixet.com/

[4] https://www.latex-project.org/



Finally! (Score:2)

by Charlotte ( 16886 )

Where was this all my life? This is actually something AI can do extremely well!

Re: Finally! (Score:3)

by Nick ( 109 )

Hello fellow low UID o.g.!

Re: (Score:2)

by Charlotte ( 16886 )

And first post, too. Here's to us keeping the dream alive :).

So it makes researchers 20% slower? (Score:2)

by gweihir ( 88907 )

Because that is what it essentially did for any real programming besides simplistic boilerplate: [1]https://mikelovesrobots.substa... [substack.com]

[1] https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware-why-ai-coding

Re: (Score:3)

by test321 ( 8891681 )

I don't consider using but I can see the use case. "Convert this image to drawing commands" could be useful to some. A drawing in a paper won't need code structure or maintenance, so code maintainability is no concern. Also editing tables in latex is tedious and tricky, and is a table at which AI should excel (generating templates, reformatting).

Re: (Score:2)

by gweihir ( 88907 )

> Also editing tables in latex is tedious and tricky, and is a table at which AI should excel (generating templates, reformatting).

Not that tricky, really. If this thing is essentially just a LaTeX editor addon, it will not do much.

cloud based latex copy? (Score:2)

by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 )

Who needs it, CERN already pays for my unterleaf.

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