In recent months, issues of plagiarism and cheating among students have risen to a new level with Generative Pre-trained Transformers, or Chat GPT. The San Francisco-based Open AI software company reached over 1 million users within the first week of its launch with users logging on across the globe.

The software as a whole is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to generate human-like texts. The model learns from human feedback and is projected to generate a revenue of 1 billion dollars by the end of 2024. 

Over the course of the next few years, chatbot extensions like Chat GPT could reduce the employment of college-educated workers specializing in web design, journalism, coding, graphic design, media writers, legal industry workers, market research and teachers, as a Business Insider article describes. 

Because Chat GPT and other AI writing platforms specialize in generating human-like pieces, who is to say what work was produced by an individual versus a browser extension? 

Various questions about this revolutionary technology have been raised: Who is using this software? How exactly does it work? Can it be accessed on school laptops? The answers to these questions, however, are best answered by the users, students. 

An anonymous junior gave insight into how Chat GPT works.

“There are five different formats for the different types of essays you can write,’’ he said. 

In addition to the variety of prompts the software can respond to, students have noticed that AI-generated writing tends to achieve high grades.

“The lowest grade I have ever gotten from using this was a B+,’’ he said. 

Another anonymous student discussed how he heard about this 4.0- promising software.

“My friend told me about it,” he said. 

AI technology has become increasingly prevalent, and according to another anonymous junior, he feels it’s taking over. 

“I’d say 50% of students use it at our school, they just lie about it,’’ he said.

He also speculated that this takeover will be observed outside of schools. 

“It is definitely going to take jobs,’’ he said.

This software has a presence on social media apps as well, with platforms such as Snapchat adding a feature where users can interact with a human-like chatbot.

I’m trying not to panic because I have been alive long enough to see how tech can be integrated in a successful way and we can all adapt. It definitely prompts a question of the value of academic integrity.

“My AI is even on Snapchat Plus,” he said. 

This anonymous student also shared how school laptops, which typically cannot access AI writing platforms, can be adapted to have these programs. 

“There is a way to download an extension on a school laptop,’’ he said. “Turnitin.com doesn’t detect it.’’

If this software is accessible during school hours, it is plausible that students rely on it for daily assignments.

Katrina Katrel, ELA teacher and AP coordinator, spoke about her experience as someone who has seen AI software grow in popularity.

“I’m trying not to panic because I have been alive long enough to see how tech can be integrated in a successful way and we can all adapt,” Katrel said. “It definitely prompts a question of the value of academic integrity.”