AI Industry Updates, September 2024: Back-to-School Assists

• ByteDance’s Gauth AI Homework Helper: Having launched in 2019, Gauth is an app from ByteDance (the Chinese company behind TikTok) that’s growing in popularity among students. Gauth originally focused on mathematics but now also supports chemistry and physics. Earlier this year, it neared the top of smartphone app download lists in the education category on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in the US. The tool is simple: students point their smartphone at a homework problem – whether printed or handwritten – and Gauth uses AI to create a step-by-step guide for them to follow, along with the correct answer.

• Google’s AI Education Tips: Ahead of the start of the school year, Google released a guide on using AI features in learning. The tips include advising students to use its Gemini generative AI assistant on school-issued Google accounts – which means it will provide answers without reviewing and incorporating user data into AI models – as well as pointing them towards its NotebookLM, a supercharged note-taking web app for those aged 18 and over. The latter makes students’ notes easily searchable, automatically creating a personalised guide to navigate them and providing summaries. Google also offers a free two-hour Generative AI for Educators course – aiming to help teachers with using AI to save time on everyday tasks, personalising instructions to meet student needs and enhancing learning activities in creative ways.

For more on AI and learning, see Evolving Edutainment: Gen AI Learning in Life in AI: Work, Learning & Skills.