Mistral's Le Chat adds 'deep research' mode
French AI company Mistral has significantly upgraded its chatbot, Le Chat, unveiling a suite of new features that edge it closer to competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The update, released Thursday, introduces advanced capabilities such as deep research mode, multilingual reasoning, and enhanced image editing—transforming Le Chat from a conversational model into a full-fledged productivity assistant.
Deep Research and Smarter Assistance
At the heart of the upgrade is Le Chat’s new deep research mode, designed to act as a smart assistant that can clarify queries, plan research, search across the web, and synthesize information into detailed answers. Similar to features in rival platforms, this functionality is aimed at both consumers and enterprise users.
“What the model does is really go and look into a big variety of sources on the web to answer a specific question,” said Elisa Salamanca, Mistral’s Head of Product. She emphasized its broad applicability—from vacation planning for individuals to in-depth industry research for businesses.
Multilingual and Multimodal Upgrades
Mistral also introduced native multilingual reasoning, allowing Le Chat to think and respond in multiple languages—including French, Spanish, Japanese, and more—with the ability to code-switch mid-sentence. This expands its usefulness globally, particularly in multilingual environments.
On the visual side, advanced image editing now lets users create or modify images with natural language prompts like “remove this object” or “put me in Paris,” further extending Le Chat’s multimodal capabilities.
Enterprise Focus with On-Prem Integration
One of the most strategic updates is Le Chat’s new enterprise data connectors, enabling organizations to run the AI locally—without sending sensitive data to the cloud. This is a clear move to differentiate from cloud-native platforms like ChatGPT (hosted on Microsoft Azure) and Gemini (on Google Cloud).
“Many of our customers—especially in sectors like banking, defense, and government—prefer on-premises solutions for security reasons,” Salamanca noted. With this release, Le Chat and Mistral’s productivity tools can now analyze internal enterprise data without leaving the organization’s own infrastructure.
Organizing Work and Boosting Productivity
The update also brings a new Projects feature that helps users group chats, documents, and tools into organized workspaces. Each project remembers tool settings and integrates with personalized libraries—making it easier to manage initiatives such as product design or team coordination.
Mistral sees this as the beginning of a broader productivity play. “A big part of our value proposition is making tools like Microsoft Excel and Google Docs work seamlessly with Le Chat,” Salamanca said, hinting at further enterprise tool integrations in the pipeline.
Voxtral and a Growing AI Ecosystem
The upgrades come just days after Mistral released Voxtral, an open-source multilingual audio model that supports transcription and reasoning. Voxtral is now integrated into Le Chat, rounding out its capabilities with audio input and interaction.
A Challenger Emerges
With these updates, Le Chat is no longer just a sleek demo of French AI prowess—it’s shaping up to be a serious contender in the global AI race. The blend of deep research, multilingual support, on-prem enterprise compatibility, and productivity tools positions Mistral’s chatbot to serve both everyday users and organizations with high privacy demands.
As the AI space heats up, Mistral's thoughtful blend of usability and enterprise readiness may give it an edge where trust, flexibility, and local control matter most.
