Girl Thanks ChatGPT at Graduation — School Administrator Threatens to Pull Her Diploma

An honor roll student who thanked ChatGPT for helping her graduate — and who broadcasted this gratitude on a T-shirt, which went viral on TikTok — quickly found herself staring down the barrel of a school administrator's wrath.

Dee (@decayingpeach) posted a video that seemed to take place at her school's graduation ceremony, where she recorded a clip showing off her T-shirt design.

"Congrats on graduation! What helped with the school year?" the person behind the camera states as Dee begins modeling for camera. Then, after touching her face with a finger, she unzips her red graduation gown.

Beneath the gown she reveals a T-shirt that reads, "I ❤️ ChatGPT." Then she turns around and shows off the back of the shirt. At the bottom, another portion of the shirt's text reads, "I wouldn't be here without you..." followed by a drawing of a graduation cap.

At this point in the clip someone's hand interjects into the video and a different voice can be heard saying: "Excuse me..."

The clip then immediately cuts to Dee sitting in a room where she's being interrogated by someone who is presumably a school administrator.

This school employee can be heard saying off camera: "And if that is what happened to get you on the high honors roll then we will have to review your marks..." Dee can be heard meekly saying "Mm-hmm" off camera.

Commenters who saw the post had a litany of reactions. There was one TikTok user who thought that her post perfectly encapsulated the duality of using artificial intelligence tech in order to take care of human tasks: "Honestly that’s so real! ChatGPT is a blessing and a curse," they penned.

There was another user on the app who suggested Dee let the school administrator know that the clip she was recording with her friend was just a gag they were pulling for the internet: "SAY IT WAS JS FOR A TIKTOK PLEASE," they penned.

And there were other folks who said that their own teachers had no issue with ChatGPT and would even use the tool in class: "ChatGPT be so helpful though and I fact check," they wrote.

However there was another user who thought that it was hypocritical of teachers to expect students not to use ChatGPT as they've found instructors pulling materials offline to utilize making tests for students — i.e., having someone else "do their job for them," a la what the student in this video has been accused of with ChatGPT.

One person wrote that it's unrealistic for a school to expect students not to use ChatGPT as they work a corporate job as a software engineer and have become proficient in utilizing the tool to automate tasks: "’I'm a software developer and use ChatGPT daily. Our company got an enterprise account and we have weekly AI trainings."

But it seemed like there were some people who were less about the "integrative work" aspect of artificial intelligence and seemed more about the automatic aspect: "I used ChatGPT for my homework once because I had writer’s block and my teacher said it was really good and I feel so bad for him," they penned.

One person explained how they think the application should be used: "ChatGPT has the capability to be very helpful. HOWEVER, you cannot just grab the paraphrasing or the summaries they use because it’s still not your wording, even if it’s 'original.'"

There's no shortage of articles that have covered the implementation of artificial intelligence tools, like ChatGPT, in academia. The De Gruyter blog penned an article delineating "how scholars integrate artificial intelligence into their daily work."

The University of Southern California career center listed the numerous ways a tool like ChatGPT can benefit students, faculty, and staff across various disciplines: "ChatGPT is finding its place in academia, contributing significantly to research and education. Quantitatively, ChatGPT-driven data analysis can potentially streamline STEM studies by swiftly processing vast datasets, writing code, and revealing valuable insights. It could also assist in the humanities by sculpting outlines for papers, providing available sources to study, or dissecting dense readings."

What's your opinion on the artificial intelligence tool? Do you think that using it is inherently cheating and robbing humans of expression? Or do you think it's a great thing to use as a jumping-off point whenever you're stuck or need some assistance with an idea or project?