As if using ChatGPT for college essays wasn’t enough, students are now getting a Gemini tool to help with their Math and Physics homework, too. Google is utilizing its Circle to Search gesture, which was received quite well, to introduce a new feature.
With this update, you’ll be able to simply circle the part you’re stuck on and then use a long-press shortcut to find a step-by-step solution to your homework questions. Google sounds proud about the fact that they’re not just giving you the answer, but also all the working for it. All you have to do to use the feature is opt-in for help with word problems from the Search Labs menu.
According to Google’s blog, it’s using its LearnLM tech to make this happen, which is apparently its “new family of models fine-tuned for learning.” The new feature is Android only for now and is available on 100 million devices today. Google says that number will double by the end of this year. The Alphabet company also adds that it will soon extend its feature to include reading and analyzing graphs, symbolic formulas, and diagrams as well.
If you ask me, I don’t have a good feeling about this feature. I’m well aware of how much I’m sounding like a Boomer now, but I’m worried that students are going to stop using their brains if advancements like these continue to happen. I was in college when ChatGPT came out and witnessed how students frequently turned to it for plagiarism. Thankfully, we now have tools to detect ChatGPT-generated content, and I’m guessing something like that will eventually come out for Gemini content, too.