November 21, 2024
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Chegg is no longer students’ top choice for cheating. In the days before students could use A.I. to plagiarize their homework, there was Clegg, an online “education” platform that charged subscribers “up to $19.95 a month for pre-written answers to textbook questions and on-demand help from experts.” With the advent of the COVID pandemic and the shift to virtual learning, subscriptions to Chegg — and, consequently, its stock price — skyrocketed.
But it all came crashing down in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, which offered students a simpler alternative to “chegging” their assignments.
Some Chegg executives initially thought the company wasn’t at risk due to the chatbot’s penchant for hallucinations, but the current model, GPT-4, “scored higher on internal evaluations than answers from Chegg’s human experts.”
With its stock down 99% from its peak, “erasing $14.5 billion of market value,” Chegg has begun incorporating A.I., and “plans to target more serious students.”
There’s a lesson here somewhere.