Bug Report: Unable to Pause Deep Research When It Goes in the Wrong Direction

ChatGPT Bugs
1

When using deep research, if the system starts researching the wrong topic (e.g., the wrong election), there is no way to pause and correct its direction. The only option is to stop it completely and restart, which wastes my time, but also wastes server resources on things I won’t use.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Start a new chat.
  2. Select Deep research and ask a question, such as “Who is most likely to form a gov after the election in some Country?”.
  3. Research begins, but it quickly becomes clear that it is looking into the wrong election (e.g., wrong year, for me it researched 2021 election instead of 2025).
  4. Try to pause or correct the direction without stopping the entire process.
  5. Notice that there is no way to adjust the query mid-research.

Expected Behavior

There should be an option to pause and adjust the research direction rather than having to stop and start over.

Additional Notes

This issue makes deep research inefficient when minor course corrections are needed. A pause and adjust feature would improve usability and the system performance.

8 Likes
2

Agreed. I have one that’s 10 minutes into research on the wrong person - which could’ve been fixed easily with a quick redirect and instead developed an amazing dossier on the wrong subject. Allow a pause/cancel.

3 Likes
3

I accidentally clicked deep research for something i could find in 1 min myself - gave it some wrong info to boot and several minutes later, 10 sources deep, i cannot cancel its failure to find the info.

1 Like
5

Agreed, mine’s stuck on “Searching” with no way to tell it to stop and just go with what it’s found so far. Lame.

6

Totally agree, very frustrating. Please allow a stop/pause button.

7

I also have this issue. I discovered that my research question was trivially resolved once I realized something - and now there is no way for me to continue in the conversation while the research is occurring, taking more than 10 minutes - no way to return to work until it is done.

I hope OpenAI will build a “cancel research” button.

8

Not only that, it goes into deep research all the time without asking if you would like it to go into deep research instead of just answering simple questions so it runs out your free deep research is every month

9

I agree. It goes into deep research for simple requests that I have no interest in researching using a valuable credit for nothing and there’s no way to stop it.

10

I am stuck on “searching” for 4 days now…