Data shows that OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot ChatGPT is mainly used for cheating on homework, as its usage fell noticeably during the summer months only to return as Americans returned to school.
ChatGPT usage suddenly plummeted when the summer began, only to later pick back up once school started, according to a report by Business Insider. This confirms the theory that students don’t really use the AI tool, unless it’s to cheat in school.
OpenAI logo seen on screen with ChatGPT website displayed on mobile seen in this illustration in Brussels, Belgium, on December 12, 2022. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Similarweb, which tracks weekly visits to ChatGPT, found that traffic to the website is up strongly since schools have reopened.
François Chollet, an AI expert at Google DeepMind, pointed out that trends also show interest in the game Minecraft jumping during the summer months, when ChatGPT interest declined, and now that school is back in session, the trends have reversed.
This could be a problem for OpenAI, given that usage increasing in the fall due to students being back in school could suggest that there is a limited range of use cases for ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots.
Over the summer, Mark Shmulik, an internet analyst at Bernstein, told Business Insider that “If it’s school kids, that’s a real yellow-red flag on the size of the prize.”
“This idea that if the ChatGPT drop-off is due to students on summer break, that implies a narrower audience and fewer use cases,” he added.
Therefore, this could mean that chatbot technology might not become a dominant computing platform in the future, given that currently, a big part of ChatGPT’s growth and popularity so heavily relies on cheating students.
As Breitbart News previously reported, cheating via ChatGPT has become a problem at schools of all levels across the country.
Earlier this year, students in an elite academic program at a Florida high school were accused of cheating by using ChatGPT to write their essays. A survey published earlier this year also suggested that at least 17 percent of students at Stanford University used ChatGPT on their final exams.
Even academic administrators appear unable to stop themselves from using ChatGPT, as evidenced from two Vanderbilt University deans having been suspended in February after they used the AI tool to write a heartfelt email to students about a deadly mass shooting.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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