For years, teachers have been bashing their heads against the wall as students outsource their homework to large language model (LLM) chatbots like ChatGPT.

The time-honored tradition of parenting-by-screen — grossly exacerbated by the rise of LLM chatbots — is now coming to a head with what many have called a “crisis in student literacy,” as reading ability among children in the US hits all-time lows.  The issue isn’t just affecting K-12 either; university professors have reported a similar drop-off in reading ability among incoming college students.

But as students of all ages grow to depend on AI to do their thinking for them, it seems AI companies also depend on students to make up a staggering proportion of their user base.

Data recently released by AI platform OpenRouter, a “one stop shop” for interacting with the medley of AI models on the market, shows a steep drop-off in ChatGPT queries from late May, when the school year is still in swing, to early June, when schools let out.

Though OpenRouter’s data doesn’t reflect every ChatGPT user, it does collect anonymous usage data of approved LLMs from its user base of 2.5 million, offering a snapshot into overall trends across AI models.

Taken together, the daily stats show that ChatGPT usage hit its peak on May 27, when users generated 97.4 billion tokens — a unit of measurement for data processed by an AI system that OpenAI says is equivalent of about four English characters — in a single day, right during finals season.

In May, ChatGPT users generated an average of 79.6 billion tokens per day — compared to 36.7 billion for the same period in June, when schools typically let out. OpenRouter’s graph of the data speaks volumes:

Interestingly, there were some dips during the school year as well — which just so happened to line up with weekends.

Though the data collected by OpenRouter has some limitations, it’s nonetheless one of the largest sources of public data on GPT usage available short of speculation, and is used by Cornell scholars and VC investors alike.

However, what makes the correlation particularly compelling is the fact that this isn’t the first time ChatGPT usage has seemed to drop off right when school lets out.

In 2023, Business Insider first considered the theory that summer vacation was leading to a drop in ChatGPT queries. Months later in mid-September, Bloomberg reported that traffic was rising again, following estimates from third-party firms.

And earlier this year, an in-depth study of 10,000 ChatGPT prompts by scholars at Rutgers found that student interactions with the bot strongly correlated with their school calendar. Spring break and summer were particular dead zones, leading the team to conclude that “most usage was academic.”

In a strange twist fit for the AI era, the temporary loss of users over the summer is likely to OpenAI’s benefit, at least in the short term.

An analysis of OpenAI’s 2024 finances found that the company burned through $9 billion to generate $4 billion in revenue, all of which went toward compute costs to process tokens. Put another way, OpenAI spent $2.25 for every dollar it brought in — which is probably why the company doesn’t expect to reach a positive cash flow until 2029.

Its decision to launch GPT-5 this week may be a strategic one as well, since the inevitable surge in usage won’t hit the extraordinary heights that it would if school was in session.

AI’s dominant role in academics is no accident. Back in July, it was reported that the leading LLM chatbot makers Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic had lavished the American Federation of Teachers with some $23 million in a “partnership” meant to bring AI into classrooms. That’s as the Trump administration — which previously awarded OpenAI a $500 billion contract — withheld over $6 billion in federal education grants earmarked for already struggling schools throughout the US.

Overall, it’ll be interesting to watch how the data changes in September, when students return to classrooms — and the chatbots that now seem to be a permanent fixture of them.

More on ChatGPT: College Students Are Sprinkling Typos Into Their AI Papers on Purpose

The post OpenAI Usage Plummets in the Summer, When Students Aren't Cheating on Homework appeared first on Futurism.

Origianl Creator:Joe Wilkins
Original Link: https://futurism.com/openai-use-cheating-homework
Originally Posted: Fri, 08 Aug 2025 15:21:56 +0000