Is it AI? How to spot it in your student's apps

Schools and app makers use the word AI for a lot of different things. Some of it is a tool your student can talk to. Some of it is a maths program that has quietly gotten better at noticing where a student is stuck. Your answer to "should my student use this?" depends on which one you are looking at.

Signs you are looking at generative AI

1. There is a chat box, and your student can type anything into it.
2. It writes something new: an essay draft, a story, a solution in your student's own words.
3. It answers follow-up questions, like "explain that simpler" or "give me one more example".
4. The app description uses words like assistant, copilot, model, chat, or generate.
5. It tells you it can make mistakes and asks you to check important information.

Signs it is a smarter program, not a chatbot

1. It only works with the questions the teacher or the app has chosen.
2. It gives feedback on an answer your student already wrote, rather than writing new text.
3. It adjusts difficulty, suggests the next practice problem, or highlights a spelling error.
4. It has no open text box and cannot be asked anything at all.

Neither kind is automatically bad. A chat tool that writes new text can teach, and it can also do the thinking for a student. A program that only adjusts difficulty collects less and surprises you less. The useful question is not "is this AI" but "what does this one do with my student's work, and who can see it".

A 30 second check you can do tonight

Open the app with your student. Ask it to explain yesterday's lesson in two sentences. Watch what happens. If it writes an explanation, you have a chat tool, and the permission slip questions apply. If it simply moves to the next problem, you have adaptive practice, and the questions are narrower.