What Is Elicit?
Answer
Elicit AI: Research Assistant for Literature Review & Evidence Synthesis
How Elicit streamlines the research process through automation and verifiable data extraction.
What is Elicit AI?
Elicit AI is an artificial intelligence-powered research assistant developed by Ought to automate and streamline the academic research workflow. It focuses on literature reviews, systematic reviews, and evidence synthesis. Elicit uses advanced language models to help researchers locate, analyze, and organize academic papers, extract relevant data, and summarize findings from scholarly literature.
What Does Elicit AI Do?
- Automated Literature Search: Rapidly finds relevant papers from databases like Semantic Scholar, even without perfect keyword matching.
- Summarization: Extracts and summarizes key findings, interventions, outcomes, and populations in structured tables or matrices.
- Data Extraction: Accurately pulls quantitative and qualitative data—including information from tables.
- Systematic Reviews: Automates screening, extraction, and synthesis for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
- Research Organization: Offers notebooks, tagging, and custom columns to manage notes and extracted findings.
- Brainstorming & Term Suggestions: Generates research questions and suggests related search terms and concepts.
- Abstract Summarization & Rephrasing: Creates concise summaries and rephrased abstracts to avoid duplication or plagiarism.
Elicit is especially useful for evidence-based fields like biomedicine, social sciences, and education, where synthesizing large volumes of research is essential.
How Does Elicit AI Differ from ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini?
The key differences lie in each AI’s design focus, data sources, workflow automation, and intended use cases:
| Feature / Aspect | Elicit AI | ChatGPT / Copilot / Gemini |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Purpose | Academic research assistant for literature review and evidence synthesis | General conversational AI for writing, coding, and productivity |
| Data Source | Academic databases (Semantic Scholar, PubMed) | Broad web data; may include uncited or fabricated content |
| Workflow Automation | Automates search, screening, extraction, and synthesis | Generates conversational or narrative responses |
| Task Specialization | Fine-tuned for academic research tasks | General-purpose; adaptable but less structured |
| Accuracy for Research | Links to real papers; prioritizes verifiability | May hallucinate or fabricate citations |
| Customization | Structured tools; less flexible formatting | Highly adaptable tone and format |
| Multimodality | Primarily text-based, focused on research | Supports multimodal input (text, image, etc.) |
Key Points of Distinction
- Research Focus: Elicit is purpose-built for literature review and data synthesis, while conversational AIs assist broadly across domains.
- Source Reliability: Elicit retrieves real, citable data from academic databases; ChatGPT and others may generate plausible but non-verifiable text.
- Workflow Integration: Elicit provides structured tools for organizing and synthesizing information; conversational AIs rely on freeform text exchanges.
- Output Specificity: Elicit’s results are structured and research-focused; general AIs require careful prompting to achieve similar precision.
Summary
Elicit AI is a specialized research assistant designed to automate academic literature review and evidence synthesis. Unlike general conversational AIs such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, it draws from verified academic sources, delivers structured and citable results, and supports systematic research workflows rather than open-ended dialogue or productivity tasks.
Sources & Further Reading
Elicit.com | PubMed Central | ChatGPT Overview | Google Gemini | Elicit vs ChatGPT Comparison | NYU Data Guide: ChatGPT
Written by Perplexity AI • Formatted for LibGuides by ChatGPT (GPT-5) • Edited by Peter Z. McKay