Studies show ChatGPT cheating is on the rise among students — young and old — as teachers remain divided on bans

• Over one in four teachers in a recent Study.com survey say they have caught students cheating by using ChatGPT.
• Some educators say it can be easy to detect AI-written work, but they understand the concern many others have.

As new studies continue to show students taking advantage of artificial intelligence technology, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, educators remain split over its larger effects on learning.

A new survey from Study.com, an online education resource, found recently that just over one in four out of 200+ K-12 teachers already have caught at least one student cheating using ChatGPT.

The AI program released in November can respond to a wide variety of general or specific questions or prompts, and has been applied to writing essays and cover letters, as well as crafting pickup lines on dating apps.

More districts and individual schools across the globe are limiting or outright banning the use of ChatGPT on school networks and devices amid concerns that it can be used easily to cheat.

While some professors have told Insider that it's easy to detect AI-generated classwork, others still are concerned. Many educators and tech experts, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, believe that teachers will be forced to turn to programs like one also released by OpenAI that helps determine whether schoolwork is AI-generated.

The teachers in the Study.com survey were mixed on AI's uses, as only one-third in the new study felt it should be banned in schools.

In another Study.com poll conducted earlier last month, educators were almost evenly split on whether ChatGPT would make their jobs easier or harder. That study also included college professors, who were more concerned about cheating than their K-12 counterparts. About 72% were concerned about AI being used to cheat, compared to 58% of K-12 educators.

However, the professors and teachers across the two surveys largely agreed that the technology should not be banned as its benefits could outweigh the risks.

"I love that students would have another resource to help answer questions," one unnamed educator told Study.com. "Do I worry some kids would abuse it? Yes. But they use Google and get answers without an explanation. It's my understanding that ChatGPT explains answers. That would be more beneficial."

In another survey of 1,000 college students conducted last month by Intelligent Magazine, of roughly 500 students who were aware of ChatGPT, 64% admitted they used it at least once on an assignment. A majority of that group said they used it on more than half of their written assignments.

As the battle to own the dominant AI search engine continues, many see it as an opportunity to reevaluate their teaching.

"ChatGPT will be brutal in classrooms where writing is assigned rather than taught," ninth-grade English teacher Brett Vogelsinger told EducationWeek about how the new technology could be used in certain learning environments.

Vogelsinger said that instead of students feeding prompts from their teacher into ChatGPT, an alternative that can draw more curiosity from students could be reading an assigned book or poem, and creating their own questions to ask ChatGPT, then critiquing the chatbot's answers.