Given that it is the time of year (late August and early September) when many students and teachers are returning to educational institutions to learn and to instruct, I thought that a back-to-school themed blog post was in order. Since school is associated with the process of studying, providing a definition of the word “study” is key. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first definition of the word “study” is “a state of contemplation.”[1] The second definition of the word “study” which comprises multiple parts includes “careful or extended consideration”[2] and “a careful examination or analysis of a phenomenon, development, or question.”[3] These definitions are important to keep in mind when thinking about using generative AI tools to help one study. In this blog post, I provide an overview of study mode in Open AI’s ChatGPT and learning mode in Anthropic’s Claude for Education. First, I go over what the companies say these two modes can do and note that they have partnered with educational institutions. Next, I ask whether these tools remove “study” from the process of studying.
What Study Mode and Learning Mode Can Do
Anthropic launched Claude for Education in April of 2025[4] and shortly thereafter, in July 2025, OpenAI launched study mode for ChatGPT.[5] Claude for Education can ask questions, highlight concepts, provide templates for research papers, study guides, and outlines, and be part of the development of “rubrics aligned to specific learning outcomes.”[6] In study mode, ChatGPT can produce “questions, hints, and step-by-step explanations.”[7] Specific tasks advertised on ChatGPT’s website include, “Act as my professor and grade my assignment according to the rubric,” “Explain quantum physics to me in 3 different levels of understanding from elementary school level to college level,” “Turn this in to flash card-style questions and answers,” and “Provide a comprehensive list of articles from top-tier peer-reviewed journals on the impact of optimism bias on creative self efficacy. Include the title, authors, date, a link to the full paper, and summarize the main findings and their relevance to the topic.”[8] Even before Anthropic introduced Claude for Education and OpenAI introduced study mode for ChatGPT, in a blog post for the AI Law Librarians blog Sean Harrington recognized that educators and students could use Claude and ChatGPT to create multiple choice questions from law school outlines.[9]
Companies that develop generative AI tools are addressing privacy concerns and partnering with educational institutions. Claude for Education says it will not train on users’ material unless users give it permission to do so.[10] Anthropic has partnered with Northeastern University and Champlain College to ensure that those affiliated with their institutions will have access to Claude for Education.[11] ChatGPT uses user input to train its models unless users opt out[12] and this practice would also apply to users of ChatGPT in study mode. The California State University system has partnered with OpenAI to make ChatGPT Edu available to all its faculty and students and ChatGPT Edu does not train on users’ input in this partnership[13]
Do These Tools Remove “Study” from the Process of Studying?
For the task mentioned above of using ChatGPT to grade an assignment according to a rubric, I wonder who created or provided the rubric. The website does not say whether the student received the rubric from the instructor, created the rubric on his or her own, or used ChatGPT to create the rubric. Also, what weight should be given to ChatGPT’s analysis? A student who uses this feature should compare ChatGPT’s output with his or her own analysis of how the work met the requirements of the rubric. The task of getting ChatGPT to explain quantum physics in three levels of understanding may be all well and good, however, it should not replace one’s own thinking and determining what words one would use when explaining quantum physics at three different levels which brings me back to the definition of “study” as “a state of contemplation.”[14] Contemplating or thinking about something is an essential part of studying. When one asks ChatGPT to make flash cards, is one removing a portion of one’s thinking that would go in to making the flash cards? Part of the point of making flash cards on one’s own was the thinking that went in to determining which terms and concepts to include in the flash cards. Once the student made the flash cards, the student was well on his or her way of learning the material. Contemplating or thinking is also an essential part of research. Using ChatGPT to “speed up your research”[15] is fine but using it as the only research strategy is problematic because students should search within a variety of platforms to avoid being fed one-sided information, think about where to look to find appropriate literature, think about trends over time in the viewpoints of articles published by journals, and think about how searching with different terms can affect the search results in databases. Moreover, while ChatGPT can provide summaries of articles, are students who rely on these summaries robbing themselves of reading abstracts and contemplating whether the information provided in the abstracts tell whether the articles will be relevant to their research? I am not a Luddite[16] by any means, however, I recognize that thinking and contemplating are essential parts of studying regardless of the tools used. I think the answer to the question of whether these tools remove “study” from the process of studying depends on the individual. If the individual continues to think on his or her own, these tools can be an asset. However, those who choose to stop thinking do not get the full benefit of studying.
References
[1] Study, definition 1, Merriam-Webster.com, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/study (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[2] Id. at Study, definition 2c.
[3] Id. at Study 2d(1).
[4] Anthropic PBC, Introducing Claude for Education (Apr. 2, 2025), https://www.anthropic.com/news/introducing-claude-for-education, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[5] OpenAI, Introducing study mode (July 29, 2025), https://openai.com/index/chatgpt-study-mode/, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[6] Anthropic PBC, supra note 4.
[7] ChatGPT, Study mode in ChatGPT, (no date), https://chatgpt.com/features/study-mode, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[8] Id.
[9] Sean Harrington, Demystifying LLMs” Crafting Multiple Choice Questions from Law Outlines, AI Law Librarians (Nov. 13, 2023), https://www.ailawlibrarians.com/2023/11/13/mcqs-for-exams/, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[10] Anthropic PBC, Navigating AI in education together, (no date), https://www.anthropic.com/solutions/education, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[11] Anthropic PBC, supra note 4.
[12] OpenAI, How your data is used to improve model performance (Aug. 29, 2025), https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is-used-to-improve-model-performance, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[13] Julia Barajas, Inside Cal State’s big $17 million bet on ChatGPT for all, LAist (Aug. 19, 2025), https://laist.com/news/education/chatgpt-california-state-university-csu-ai-deal, (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).
[14] Merriam-Webster.com, supra note 1.
[15] ChatGPT, supra note 7.
[16] Luddite, Merriam-Webster.com, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Luddite (last accessed Aug. 31, 2025).