Mistral AI brings deep research to Le Chat, alongside image editing, voice mode and more

French generative artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI SAS today announced multiple updates for Le Chat, the company’s AI chatbot assistant, including a deep research capability, image editing, voice mode, projects and advanced image editing.

Le Chat is Mistral’s competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google LLC’s Gemini, Anthropic PBC’s Claude and other AI assistants on the market. This is the first time the company has unleashed a Deep Research Mode.

Similar to other AI chatbots with deep research capabilities, this mode turns Le Chat into a coordinated research assistant that can plan, clarify needs and synthesize sources into a structured reference-backed report that a user can easily follow.

According to Mistral, the new mode is powered by a tool-augmented Deep Research agent that provides transparency and helpful collaboration as a partner. The company said it can assist with researching anything from market trends, business strategy or scientific research. Of course, if a user wants to use it for something closer to home, they could also just ask it to assist with personal planning, travel or shopping.

Mistral: now with voice mode

Mistral recently released its Voxtral model, which is an open-source, state-of-the-art speech understanding AI model available in two sizes: 24 billion parameters for production and 8 billion parameters for local deployment.

This enables the company’s newest voice mode update, which allows users to talk to Le Chat just like a person, no typing needed. Users can now brainstorm ideas, get quick answers and transcribe meetings, all without typing.

Thinking mode, which allows AI to reason through complex questions by breaking them down into step-by-step thoughts, powered by the company’s reasoning model series Magistral, now comes in multilingual mode. This means that users can ask for complex concepts or reasoning in different languages or write prompts in separate languages such as English and French, or Japanese and Spanish.

Organize with projects

Projects help users keep groups of chats and files together in one context-rich space so that they can stay organized. Each project has its own default Library that remembers which tools and settings are enabled, so things remain unchanged when a user leaves that space.

Users may also upload files that will be referenced; the assistant will pull content from the Library and keep everything — including chats, documents and ideas — in one place. This is perfect for when a user wants to separate different lines of thinking across chats, but wants to retain thought context between them.

Mistral has also added a new image tool to its retinue that allows users to create and then edit images with simple prompts such as “remove this object” or “place this in another city” — such as this Mistral AI-generated cat (pictured) and the model transforms the scene while preserving characters and other details.

The company said that’s ideal for making consistent edits across a series, keeping people, objects and other compositional elements recognizable from one image to the next.

Image: Mistral AI/SiliconANGLE