Educators have been alarmed with the advent of ChatGPT which is capable of writing half-decent essays and responding to many common classroom questions. New York City’s education department banned ChatGPT on its networks as it could have negative impact on student learning. Some Australian universities would change examination formats to banish AI tools. Some in the academic sector are less concerned, and see ChatGPT as an opportunity, rather than a threat. ChatGPT, as it stands today, is not infallible and gets things wrong. It is an innovation on the lines of calculators and text editors. It encourages people with a blank sheet of paper to write the first draft. However, later they will rewrite it to make it individualised. AI tools are also subject to detection if used. It is like plagiarism sniffing tools such as CopyScape. Someone created a programme that analyses text and decides whether it was written by ChatGPT. In future, we could have many AI-detector tools.

Open AI which owns ChatGPT is already working on a ‘statistical watermark’ prototype. Thus educators would be comfortable despite the ChatGPT in the long run.