Elicit

Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant designed to automate parts of the research workflow for academics, students, and professionals. Originally developed by Ought, a nonprofit machine learning research lab, Elicit uses large language models (LLMs) to perform tasks such as finding relevant academic papers, extracting key data from those papers, and summarizing their findings. The platform pulls data from the Semantic Scholar database, covering millions of open-access research papers. Unlike traditional keyword-based search engines, Elicit can identify relevant publications even when keywords don't match perfectly by understanding the semantic context of a research question. It allows users to create a "research matrix," where the AI automatically extracts specific information—such as intervention types, outcomes, number of participants, and population summaries—across multiple papers for side-by-side comparison. This systematic approach expedites the literature review process, making it ideal for questions in biomedicine, social sciences, and other fields that rely on empirical evidence. In September 2023, Elicit transitioned into a public benefit corporation to scale its impact while maintaining its mission of improving human reasoning and scientific discovery through technology.