Key takeaways 

• ChatGPT's new study mode works through questions with students.
• It's available to logged-in ChatGPT Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users. 
• Study mode will get improvements in the near future. 

Since generative AI tools such as ChatGPT launched, a debate has emerged: Will they impede students' education by doing their work for them? OpenAI's latest ChatGPT feature seeks to tackle that issue head-on. 

OpenAI unveiled study mode in ChatGPT, Tuesday. It's a learning experience that helps students work toward the solution to a problem instead of just receiving the response. The feature encourages learning through step-by-step guiding questions meant to both engage students and promote deeper understanding. 

Also: Anthropic launches Claude for Education, an AI to help students think critically

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, 's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

"We built [study mode] based on research and learning science, and conversation with pedagogy experts around the world," said Leah Belsky, VP and GM of education at OpenAI, to the press. "We collaborated with them to gather examples of how a teacher or a tutor would ideally respond to drive learning, engagement, and curiosity."

Study mode in action

In a demo of the feature, Abhi Muchhal, who works in product at OpenAI, prompted both the regular version of ChatGPT and the study mode version with "ChatGPT, teach me about game theory." The regular version provided a long, comprehensive response detailing what it is. While useful, this resembles a Wikipedia page or report that may still be difficult to digest. 

Meanwhile, in study mode, instead of automatically generating the response, ChatGPT engages the students by asking questions such as what their learning level is and what they already know about the topic to best tailor the conversation. 

Beyond the interactive prompts that mimic Socratic questioning, other key features include knowledge checks with quizzes, open-ended questions, and even personalized feedback; personalized lessons based on previous questions that assess skill level; and responses organized with easy-to-follow sections. 

How to access 

You can access study mode in ChatGPT Free, Plus, Pro, and Team as long as you are logged in. ChatGPT Edu will be available in the next few weeks. To try it, all you have to do is select "study and learn" from the tools in ChatGPT. 

OpenAI cautioned that study mode is a first step in improving how students learn using ChatGPT. The approach used right now, custom system instructions, allows OpenAI to collect feedback quickly, but also results in "some inconsistent behavior and mistakes across conversations." OpenAI said that once it has collected student feedback, it plans to train the behavior directly into its main models. 

Also: Can AI save teachers from a crushing workload? There's new evidence it might

In the future, OpenAI also plans to build on study mode with clear visualizations, goal setting, tracking, and deeper personalization. To enable further research on AI in education, OpenAI is working with partners and academic institutions and plans on releasing longer-term studies and deeper analysis on the topic. 

OpenAI isn't the only AI company getting into the education space. Companies such as Google and Anthropic also have offerings tailored toward students, and many of the AI research companies, including Nvidia, have partnerships with universities across the country to help students and educators prepare for an AI-first future.  

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