What Is Elicit?
Answer
Elicit AI is an artificial intelligence-powered research assistant designed specifically to automate and streamline key parts of the academic research workflow, with a focus on literature reviews, systematic reviews, and evidence synthesis12811. Developed by Ought, Elicit uses advanced language models to help researchers quickly locate, analyze, and organize academic papers, extract relevant data, and summarize findings from scientific literature811.
Elicit AI offers a suite of features tailored for academic and scientific research, including:
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: Rapidly finds relevant academic papers from databases like Semantic Scholar, even without perfect keyword matching811.
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: Extracts and summarizes key information from papers, such as main findings, interventions, outcomes, and population details, presenting them in an organized table or matrix1811.
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: Pulls quantitative and qualitative data from articles, including information from tables, with high accuracy111.
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: Automates the process of screening, extracting, and synthesizing data for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, significantly reducing manual effort and time1811.
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: Provides tools like notebooks, custom columns, and tagging to help organize notes, papers, and extracted findings11.
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: Helps generate research questions, identify relevant search terms, and suggest related concepts or topics2811.
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: Offers concise summaries of abstracts and can rephrase content to avoid plagiarism1011.
Elicit is especially valuable for researchers conducting evidence-based reviews in fields like biomedicine, social sciences, and education, where synthesizing findings from large volumes of literature is critical1811.
The main differences between Elicit AI and general-purpose conversational AIs (such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini) lie in their design focus, underlying workflows, and intended use cases:
| Feature/Aspect | Elicit AI | ChatGPT / Copilot / Gemini |
|---|---|---|
| Research assistant for literature reviews and evidence synthesis12811 | General conversational AI for a wide range of tasks (writing, coding, Q&A, productivity, etc.)3459 | |
| Academic databases (e.g., Semantic Scholar); real, citable papers6811 | Trained on broad internet data; may generate plausible but uncited or even fabricated content69 | |
| Automates search, screening, extraction, and summarization for research papers1811 | Provides conversational responses, content generation, and productivity assistance3459 | |
| Fine-tuned for research-related tasks: literature review, data extraction, systematic review12811 | General-purpose; can answer questions, write essays, generate code, summarize, and more3459 | |
| Prioritizes accuracy and verifiability; links to real papers and extracts actual data6811 | May hallucinate or fabricate references; not inherently tied to real academic sources69 | |
| Structured features for research; less customizable in output style10 | Highly customizable responses; can adapt tone, format, and style10 | |
| Primarily text-based, focused on academic literature1811 | Some (e.g., Gemini) handle text, images, and other modalities5 |
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: Elicit is purpose-built for academic research, offering tools for literature review, data extraction, and systematic review automation, while ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini are broad conversational agents designed for general tasks across domains1245811.
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: Elicit pulls directly from academic databases, ensuring that references and summaries are based on real, published work. In contrast, ChatGPT and similar AIs may generate convincing but fictitious references or content if not specifically constrained6811.
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: Elicit automates and structures the research process, enabling users to organize, extract, and synthesize information efficiently. General conversational AIs provide flexible assistance but lack the specialized tools and workflows for systematic academic research12811.
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: Elicit delivers highly relevant, research-specific content, while conversational AIs provide broader, more generalized outputs unless carefully prompted and guided10.
Elicit AI is a specialized research assistant designed to automate and optimize the academic literature review and synthesis process, providing verified, structured, and citable outputs tailored for researchers. It differs from general conversational AIs like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini by focusing on research workflows, sourcing real academic content, and offering tools specifically for evidence synthesis, rather than serving as a general-purpose conversational or productivity assistant12681011.
Citations:
- https://elicit.com/solutions/systematic-reviews
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/exploring-features-functions-elicit-ai-research-assistant-parker
- https://openai.com/chatgpt/overview/
- https://aisera.com/blog/what-is-ai-copilot/
- https://www.simplilearn.com/what-is-google-gemini-article
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwS0IklPzi8
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12022595/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10089336/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT
- https://www.toolify.ai/ai-news/enhance-your-research-with-chat-gpt-and-elicit-ai-tools-921889
- https://www.fahimai.com/elicit-ai
- https://elicit.com
- https://otio.ai/blog/elicit-ai
- https://www.debutinfotech.com/blog/what-is-chatgpt
- https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/what-is-microsoft-copilot
- https://afforai.com/comparisons/elicit-alternative
- https://libguides.hkust.edu.hk/AI-tools-literature-review/compare-ai-tools
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJPS-EvNfk
- https://support.elicit.com/en/categories/146369
- https://www.fahimai.com/how-to-use-elicit
- https://libguides.baylor.edu/AI-for-researchers/elicit
- https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/
- https://guides.nyu.edu/data/chatgpt
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_QoWEYRuk
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uerAe6FFyXs
- https://sourceforge.net/software/compare/ChatGPT-vs-Elicit/
- https://substack.com/home/post/p-140705939
- https://www.reddit.com/r/perplexity_ai/comments/1gzy8pw/for_those_doing_serious_research_plus_a/
- https://www.capterra.com.sg/compare/150726/1060640/siteglue/vs/elicit
- https://blog.elicit.com/elicit-reports-eval/
Answer from Perplexity: pplx.ai/share