---
title: Reading App Omphalis Lets Readers Use AI to Understand a Research Paper by Asking Questions Out Loud
description: Omphalis now lets readers ask a research paper questions out loud and hear answers grounded in their own saved sources, with the cited passages on screen.
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-10-08T11:52:22.397Z
updated: 2026-10-08T11:52:22.423Z
canonical: https://www.sovereignmagazine.com/article/how-to-use-ai-to-understand-a-research-paper
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/omphalis-ask-voice-emerson.webp
categories: Tech
content_type: Spotlight
region: United States
publication: Rich Dad Magazine
about:
  - type: Organization
    name: Omphalis
    description: Omphalis is a reading app from Voxiven LLC for the articles, papers, podcasts and videos people save because they want to understand them. Readers can ask questions about their own Library, typed or out loud, and each answer shows numbered sources that open the cited passage. It runs on the web, iPhone and Android, with Chrome and Firefox extensions.
    url: https://omphalis.ai
    industry: Software
    sameAs:
      - https://www.linkedin.com/company/voxiven
      - https://x.com/omphalis_ai
      - https://www.youtube.com/@Omphalis
---

Omphalis, a reading app from the US company Voxiven, now lets readers ask questions about a research paper out loud and hear an answer designed to be grounded in their selected sources. The feature, Ask voice, launched on September 30 in the Omphalis web app. Each spoken answer arrives with numbered sources, and choosing one opens the cited passage, highlighted, in the paper.

"I'm a much better listener, especially in conversation," says Stanly Thomas, the founder of Voxiven, who has more than 20 years of engineering experience, including roles at Microsoft, Oracle and Schneider Electric. "I can concentrate intensely for a while, but then lose the thread of an argument. I wanted to pause while reading a dense paper and say, 'Can you explain what the author means here?' and keep talking until it made sense. That's what we built into Omphalis: a way to keep the conversation going while keeping the answers grounded in the source I'm reading."

**About Stanly Thomas**
Founder, Omphalis

Stanly Thomas is the founder of Voxiven LLC, the company behind the reading app Omphalis. He has more than 20 years of engineering experience, including roles at Microsoft, Oracle and Schneider Electric.

## Using AI to Understand a Research Paper by Voice

Much of the advice online for reading a hard paper with AI is to paste it into a chatbot, [ask for a summary](https://richdadmagazine.com/article/ai-answers-too-quickly-and-it-might-be-changing-how-we-think) and then ask for the terms to be explained. Ask voice runs in the browser beside the paper being discussed. The reader presses Talk, Ask greets them by name, mentions what is open and listens, and a live transcript shows each question as it is spoken. Ask starts speaking while an answer is still being put together, so the exchange keeps a conversational pace over several turns.

Ask keeps the thread of the conversation, so a follow-up about what a term means or how two claims fit together is treated as part of the same line of thought. In a demonstration on Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address "The American Scholar," a reader asks what Emerson says is the right use of books. Ask answers aloud that, for Emerson, books are for nothing but to inspire, and that the scholar, as Man Thinking, must not be subdued by them. The reader follows up with "And how does he think reading goes wrong?" and the second answer draws on Emerson's warnings about bookworms and bibliomaniacs, with numbered sources that lead to the passages it used. In the video, the reader's questions are spoken by a synthetic voice so the demonstration can be repeated, and the answers and on-screen interaction come from the running app.

The reader decides what Ask may draw on, whether the item open in front of them, a Space of related material or their whole Library. Ask proposes a starting scope from the question, and the reader can change it at any time. A fourth option, Omphalis guide, answers questions about using the app. "The reader stays in control of the scope. If they select it explicitly, Ask respects that choice," Thomas says. "When Ask selects the scope automatically, it may retry within the same Space, but it never automatically searches across all Spaces or goes out to the web."

Readers can interrupt by speaking, switch to typing at any point and end a session by saying so. A session lasts up to 20 minutes, and each question and answer stays in the conversation panel as text, with its sources, after the session ends. Speech is transcribed and voiced by Deepgram, and Omphalis does not keep the audio.

## AI Answers Grounded in the Reader's Own Sources

Ask is designed to ground answers about a reader's material in their selected sources, with citations they can inspect. It does not read its citations aloud. They appear beside each spoken answer, and choosing one opens the passage in the reader, highlighted within the text around it. Answers can still be wrong, so [readers should check the original passages](https://richdadmagazine.com/article/scribd-ai-trust-verification-survey).

![An Ask answer in Omphalis with numbered sources linking to the passages it used](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/omphalis-ask-answer-sources.webp)
*Photo: Omphalis*

A study by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC, published in October 2025, checked more than 3,000 answers about the news from ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity and found at least one significant problem in 45% of them. The study covered news answers from those four assistants and did not test Omphalis.

"Grounding doesn't make an answer infallible, but it gives the reader a way to inspect it and stay in control," Thomas says. "In a spoken conversation, long pauses interrupt the flow, yet speed can't come at the expense of getting the facts right. We've tuned our pipeline around the sources the reader has chosen and trusts, giving us a defined body of material to work from as we balance precision with the pace of a natural conversation."

## When the Sources Cannot Answer the Question

"If the sources can't answer a question, Ask is designed to make that limit clear rather than hide it behind a confident answer," Thomas says. "If there's nothing relevant, it says so directly: 'I couldn't find anything about that in these sources.' If there's related material that doesn't fully answer the question, it explains the gap and points to the closest passage it does have; it's not meant to fill that gap from the model's general knowledge."

Before launch, Voxiven graded 958 Ask answers across 21 evaluation runs between September 23 and 25, using a fixed set of 79 test questions that were repeated across runs, the company says. For voice, it tested 118 spoken questions across 15 automated runs, using computer-generated US, British and Indian English voices. Thomas describes these as internal test figures, not customer usage numbers. The team used them to examine source grounding and the spoken experience before launch.

## Chatting With Your Own Documents Using AI

Omphalis brings web articles, research PDFs, EPUBs, Word documents, podcast episodes and YouTube videos into one reading environment, and turns audio and video into transcripts that can be read and questioned alongside written material. Someone studying a topic can gather an introductory article, a detailed paper and a recorded interview in one Space, then ask where the sources agree, where they differ and which passages support a point.

In the reader, a structure panel maps each piece into its sections and its recurring names and terms, and dotted underlines in the text open short explanations of difficult terms and references. A reader can move from the outline to a passage, from a passage to a question and from an answer back to the text. Notebooks keep passages beside the reader's own writing, and a notebook's Ask cells answer questions from its contents and keep the cited responses and follow-up threads.

![Omphalis reader showing an article with its structure panel of sections](https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/omphalis-reader-structure-panel.webp)
*Photo: Omphalis*

## Ask Voice for Students, Researchers and Founders

Voxiven designed Ask voice around "people working through material that takes sustained thought: founders researching a market, engineers exploring a technical subject, students and researchers following a dense paper," Thomas says. "We're especially interested in people who find it easier to follow an idea through conversation, as I do. Voice gives them a way to ask, listen and follow up while staying connected to the material."

Omphalis launched in July 2026 and added iPhone and Android apps in August. Ask voice is available now in the web app, in English, and mobile support is planned. New accounts get a 30-day trial of every feature, including 200 voice minutes, without a credit card, then move to the Free plan unless they choose a paid one. Voice comes with the paid plans, each with a monthly allowance of Ask voice minutes: Pro at $9 a month includes 60 minutes, Premium at $19 includes 200 and Scholar at $39 includes 400.

**About Omphalis**

Omphalis is a reading app from Voxiven LLC for the articles, papers, podcasts and videos people save because they want to understand them. Readers can ask questions about their own Library, typed or out loud, and each answer shows numbered sources that open the cited passage. It runs on the web, iPhone and Android, with Chrome and Firefox extensions.

[Website](https://omphalis.ai)

## FAQ

**Q: Can AI be used to understand research papers?**
Yes. In Omphalis, a reader adds a paper to their Library and asks Ask about it, typed or out loud. Ask is designed to ground each answer in that paper or the other sources the reader selected, with numbered sources that open the cited passage so the reader can check the answer against the text.

**Q: How to use AI to summarize a research paper?**
Most AI tools will summarize a paper on request. In Omphalis, a reader can ask Ask to walk through a paper's argument or method, and each answer lists the passages it drew on, so the summary can be checked against the paper. The structure panel also maps the paper into its sections and recurring terms.

**Q: Can I use AI for a research paper?**
AI reading tools can help a reader work through papers, compare several sources and find the passages behind a point. Whether AI may be used to write a paper depends on the rules of the university, journal or employer involved. Omphalis is built for reading and understanding saved material, and its answers point back to the source text.

**Q: Is ChatGPT the best AI for research?**
It depends on the task. Omphalis is designed for working through saved material, with the source open beside the conversation and citations readers can inspect. Readers should still check answers against the original text.