As technology advances, the worry of cheating and plagiarism continues to rise. OpenAI has launched a new website that was created to be an educational aide for students and teachers.

The site was launched Nov. 30, 2022 after the prototype was successful. ChatGPT is able to provide essays, answers and other schoolwork by using data and sites programed into it. The site also uses information the user imputed including grade level, length and topic of the paper; the website can also include certain citations. Because the site is new, it is starting to become known to teachers and students.

“I just heard about it actually a few weeks ago; it was over Christmas break,” debate teacher Tim Laner said.

Teachers have different views on the new site as some think it could be used for positive and some believe it to be negative. Some teachers have not heard about the site, and some have little to no knowledge on it.

“I think that it would work for students who are going to take a speech out on the competitive level, because it could actually formulate the speech, but then they could manipulate parts of it,” Laner said.

Students like senior Lola Tuschoff have used the sites on their own time out of school as a resource for their own stories, essays or other papers.

“I’ve used them for out of school projects,” Tuschoff said. “I’m writing a book, and I’ve used them for rewording things.”

Junior Jamie Cantrell agrees that ChatGPT and other similar sites can be used as a resource instead of cheating.

“If you’re having writer’s block, you can use that, put something down, then you can rewrite it in your own words,” Cantrell said. “Although you’re taking less work out for yourself, if you’re having serious issues with your paper, that’s an understandable way to go.”

Although students believe the sites should be shared to students to be used, Tuschoff believes people already know about the sites, and that they should not be talked about to students anymore then they are.

“A lot of students are knowledgeable about them and use them for their essays whether it is cheating or simply for help with rewording,” Tuschoff said. “I feel like if attention is brought to them more than it already is people will be more likely to use them.”

Freshman Adelie McQueen disagrees with Tuschoff on what to tell students about these sites.

“They should be told about these websites so they know that they have resources,” McQueen said.

Laner has a system in his English class to prevent plagiarism in several ways, including websites like ChatGPT, but has not yet thought about his other classes.

“In my English class, they have to show me progress of their work, for debate, speech and forensics I have not even thought about the question,” Laner said.

While ChatGPT has many uses for writing papers, Cantrell and McQueen believe these sites should be used as a resource in their classes.

“It’s being portrayed as something that’s terrible for a student when it could be the only thing that can help those students in the class,” Cantrell said.