OpenAI, on July 29, launched ‘Study Mode’, a new feature on ChatGPT. It interactively guides students and learners through their questions, helping them understand and engage rather than simply giving answers.
This follows Google’s launch of study features in AI mode, where users can create study plans and organise information across multiple sessions to keep track of all the material being studied.
The Study Mode feature on ChatGPT is available for all users – Free, Plus, Pro, and Team – with availability in ChatGPT Edu coming in the next few weeks.
“When students engage with study mode, they’re met with guiding questions that calibrate responses to their objective and skill level to help them build deeper understanding,” said OpenAI in a blog post.
The company stated the feature was developed in consultation with teachers, scientists, and education experts to promote deeper learning.
The Study Mode currently offers personalised experiences, quizzes, open-ended questions, and step-by-step instructions to help students understand a concept. However, OpenAI said that it is working on features that provide visualisations for concepts, goal-setting and progress tracking tools.
OpenAI has embedded instructions into ChatGPT to guide its behaviour as a tutor.
Simon Willison, co-creator of the Django web framework, managed to extract the system prompt–the instructions set to the AI model to behave in a specific way, revealing details of its inner workings.
The feature is designed to ask users preliminary questions about their background, ensure that the user is truly learning concepts by offering quick summaries, mnemonics, or mini-reviews, and mix activities, questions, and explanations so that it feels like a conversation, and much less than a lecture.
Wilson expressed fascination with how AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic leverage system prompts. He noted that they use careful prompt engineering to introduce entirely new features to their platforms.
There’s Still a Lot Left to Be Desired For
While many expressed positive views of the feature, some also highlighted shortcomings. One user noted that the lack of dedicated ‘purpose-built’ user interface elements for quizzes, flashcards, and structured syllabi is a significant drawback.
Dominik Lukes, an AI expert affiliated with the University of Oxford, observed that the tool fails to effectively assess the user’s prior knowledge. He commented that it tends to ask only superficial questions and not enough of them.
“It is just a wall of text – the cognitive load just increases as it goes on – it should really encourage the students to speak instead of type,” he added. If you’re eager to learn, OpenAI’s Study Mode can help, but a better model with more effective teaching exchanges in its data would be ideal, said Lukes.
Another user on X noted that ChatGPT struggles to recommend optimal questions for students due to limited data on their context, skills, and courseware, though it’s a step in the right direction.
Similarly, Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, emphasised in a podcast a few months ago that the primary challenge for AI in education isn’t addressing resource shortages or technological gaps. Instead, he argued that AI’s real test lies in fostering genuine curiosity and sustained interest among students.
OpenAI will now compete with Learn About, one of Google’s products released last year. The latter features a more dynamic user interface with interactive guides, quizzes, and additional visual information to enhance learning. However, one needs to join a waitlist to access Google’s Learn About tool.
What Happens to Ed-Tech Startups Now?
OpenAI’s new ChatGPT feature remains a general-purpose tool. This launch, however, raises the question of whether it’s the start of the end for AI-focused ed-tech startups. However, missing features still offer opportunities for these startups.
According to Xikun Zhang, a research scientist at OpenAI, general agents like these are not optimal yet.
“And even if frontier general agent labs wanted to build optimised agents for [multiple] verticals, those initiatives were often harder to justify for AGI-focused companies,” Zhang said.
He emphasised that since the ‘G’ in ‘AGI’ represents ‘general,’ leading technology companies will likely continue prioritising the development of broad, general-purpose capabilities over specialised tools.
Meanwhile, Abhigyan Arya, the co-founder of Opennote, a Y-Combinator-backed ed-tech startup, highlighted something similar.
“Education is the prime frontier for AI, but no lab understands what students need. Plain text chatting doesn’t help anyone, interactivity does,” Arya said in a post on X.
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