It just occured to me that it underperforms Opus 4.5 on benchmarks when search is not enabled, but outperforms it when it is - is it possible the the Chinese internet has better quality content available?

My problem with deep research tends to be that what it does is it searches the internet, and most of the stuff it turns up is the half baked garbage that gets repeated on every topic.

Hm, interesting. I use Kagi assistant with search (by Kagi), and it has a search filter that allows the model to search only academic articles. So far it has not disappointed. Of course the cynic in me thinks it's only a matter of time before there's so much AI-generated garbage even in academic articles that it will eventually become worthless. But when that turns into a serious problem, we will find some sort of solution (probably one involving tons of roller ball pens and in-person meaty handshakes).

maybe they don't have Reddit?