Education Firm Offers GPT-4 Powered Tool Amidst Controversy

Matthew Broersma,
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US education software firm Chegg announces CheggMate, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, amidst controversy around AI chatbots in the classroom

US educational software firm Chegg on Monday introduced a study aid powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, its most advanced large langage model, amidst questions over how tools such as ChatGPT will affect education.

Chegg chief executive Dan Rosensweig said the company’s new CheggMate would combine OpenAI’s tecnology with his firm’s proprietary data to create “the most powerful study companion for students”.

“CheggMate will enable students to have an instantaneous AI conversation that is personalised to their learning style and needs, supported by our substantial proven and reliable content library,” Rosensweig said.

Chegg’s shares rose in pre-market trading on Monday, but are still about 28 percent down this year amidst concerns about how popular chatbot ChatGPT and other such tools will affect its business.

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Image credit: Andrew Neel/Pexels

Education controversy

In February Chegg’s shares dropped up to 23 percent in a single day after it reported underwhelming projections for the year and dismissed the threat of AI to its business.

“AI and machine learning models are not new to Chegg,” Rosensweig said in an earnings call at the time. “We have been leveraging these technologies within our platform for years, and we believe these continued advancements will benefit Chegg as well as students.”

He said Chegg had been using OpenAI’s GPT-2 technology inside its writing products to help power tools related to grammar and paraphrasing.

Analysts were concerned at the time that Chegg would see a decrease in subscriber growth due to ChatGPT, which is currently offered for free.

Accuracy

On Monday Rosensweig said CheggMate uses information that has been reviewed for accuracy – a problem with chatbots, which are not necessarily capable of distinguishing correct from incorrect data.

In February he said ChatGPT “doesn’t do what we do yet”.

“I think we’ve discovered this maybe 6 percent overlap in what they can provide versus what we provide. And of the 6 percent, I think currently, 50 percent of them were wrong,” Rosensweig told analysts.

Sam Altman, chief executive of Microsoft-backed Open AI, said on Monday that artificial intelligence  has the “potential to provide tailored learning experiences to everyone and improve the way people around the world learn”.

Chegg said it was now allowing people to sign up to test an early version of CheggMate and that limited early access to the tool would begin for students in May.