OpenAI is going after scientists. On January 27, the company launched Prism, a free workspace designed to replace the patchwork of tools researchers rely on to write, edit, and publish papers. It’s powered by GPT-5.2, OpenAI’s most advanced model for mathematical and scientific reasoning, and it’s built directly into a LaTeX-native editor.
The pitch is simple: stop switching between text editors, PDF readers, reference managers, LaTeX compilers, and separate ChatGPT windows. Prism consolidates all of that into one cloud-based workspace where the AI has full context of your manuscript, equations, citations, and figures.
Damilare Odedina
Addressing the fragmentation problem
OpenAI says researchers waste time moving between disconnected tools. “Much of the everyday work of research—drafting papers, revising arguments, managing equations and citations, and coordinating with collaborators—remains fragmented across disconnected tools,” the company stated in its announcement.
What Prism can do
Prism isn’t starting from zero. It grew out of Crixet, a cloud-based LaTeX platform OpenAI acquired and has since rebuilt with AI at its core. LaTeX is the standard for scientific publishing, but it’s notoriously difficult to use. Prism keeps the LaTeX foundation but layers on features that make the writing process faster: AI-assisted drafting and revision with full document context, automatic bibliography generation by searching arXiv and other databases, conversion of whiteboard sketches into publication-ready diagrams, and voice-based editing for quick changes.
The company is positioning this as the scientific equivalent to what happened with coding tools like Cursor and Windsurf.
The bigger play for healthcare and research
The timing isn’t random. Over the past few weeks, both OpenAI and Anthropic have been rolling out healthcare and research-focused products. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Health for consumers. Anthropic launched Claude for Healthcare, targeting hospitals and medical researchers. The message is clear: AI companies see science and medicine as the next big vertical, and they’re building tools to fit directly into those workflows.
Prism is free to anyone with a personal ChatGPT account, with unlimited projects and unlimited collaborators. No seat limits, no local LaTeX installation required. OpenAI says access will expand to Business, Team, Enterprise, and Education plans soon. Crixet, the original platform, will no longer be offered separately.
The company acknowledged concerns about AI hallucinations in scientific work, particularly around citations. When asked about fake references, Weil said researchers still have to verify their work. “None of this absolves the scientist of the responsibility to verify that their references are correct, but it can certainly speed up the process,” he said, adding that the goal is to “integrate AI directly into scientific workflows in ways that preserve accountability and keep researchers in control.”
Whether Prism actually speeds up science or just adds another layer of AI-generated noise is something the research community will have to figure out. But OpenAI is betting big that 2026 will mark a shift. “In 2025, AI changed software development forever,” the company said. “In 2026, we expect a comparable shift in science.”
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