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machine learning

ChatGPT use is picking up again, just as students head back to school

Students are returning to AI chatbots in swaths after a summer lull.

9/1/25 10:41AM

Pencil case? Check. Textbooks? Check. Large language model with multistep reasoning capabilities? Check.

With the long weekend signaling the final dregs of summer, students across the country are gearing up for the new term. And, in 2025, back to school for many high school and college students means reconnecting with their study buddy: ChatGPT.

Bot lull summer

As reported by Futurism in August, daily usage of OpenAI’s flagship chatbot plummeted in early June, when summer semesters wrapped up, according to data from AI platform OpenRouter. Based on a 2.5 million-strong user base, peak usage coincided with the middle of finals season on May 27, as users generated 97.4 billion tokens (a unit for data processing equivalent to roughly four English characters).

Soon after, average monthly usage more than halved from May to June, when summer vacation began, to 36.7 billion tokens per day, and remained low throughout July. Now, as a new school year looms, ChatGPT usage is picking back up again.

Chat, eat my homework

Per Futurism, other drops in ChatGPT usage throughout the school year coincided with weekends; a Google report on shopping trends also outlined that searches for “AI laptops” more than quadrupled from mid-April to the end of May, during exam season; and a Pew Research survey from January found that the share of teens who said they use ChatGPT for schoolwork doubled to 26% from 2023 to 2025.

Though even the most esteemed institutes for learning advocate for supporting education with AI tools, the impact that overreliance on the tech could have on skill development, intellectual standards, and research integrity — particularly at the college level — is yet to be seen.

Jon Keegan3h

Anthropic launches “Claude Design,” sending shares of Figma and Adobe down

Anthropic has been slowly and steadily gaining a leading share in the enterprise AI market by focusing on coding, spreadsheets, and other common productivity and workplace apps.

Now it’s going after design apps.

Today Anthropic launched Claude Design, a dedicated app powered by its latest model, Claude Opus 4.7, that lets users use text prompts to build website designs, user interface prototypes, presentations, and marketing materials.

Shares of Figma and Adobe sank on the news.

While Claude has previously had the ability to create designs and user interfaces, breaking it out into a dedicated app signals a major new piece of its enterprise strategy alongside its popular Claude Code product.

Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs

Shares of Figma and Adobe sank on the news.

Rani Molla8h

Apple’s China iPhone shipments surged 20% in Q1 even as overall smartphone shipments fell

Apple’s iPhone shipments in China jumped 20% last quarter, even as the country’s overall smartphone market fell 4%, according to new data from Counterpoint Research. Rising memory costs have pushed prices higher across the industry, weighing on demand.

Apple appears poised to ride out the broader smartphone slump. Its strength at the less price-sensitive high end of the market and its unusual leverage over suppliers, which helps keep costs in check, give it an edge over rivals.

Greater China remains a critical region for Apple, making up about 18% of its total revenue in the fourth quarter. The company accounted for 19% of China’s smartphone market in the first quarter, up from 15% a year earlier, per Counterpoint.

Rani Molla4/16/26

Anthropic has surged past OpenAI in capturing business spending on generative-AI software

Last quarter, Anthropic attracted the lion’s share of trackable business spending on generative-AI software, according to new data from Ramp, a fintech company that provides corporate cards and expense management software for small firms and Fortune 500 companies alike.

The data showed that in the first quarter, Anthropic saw 37% of spending, its biggest share yet, versus 33% for OpenAI. Notably, the dataset doesn’t capture spending by Google or Microsoft.

OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, still leads in overall adoption at 81% of AI buyers, but Anthropic is catching up, at nearly 63% in March. Overall, more than half of Ramp’s customers currently pay for AI, up from just 18% two years ago.

Anthropic’s enterprise tools, including Claude Code and Cowork, have been making waves among the business class, sending its revenue soaring.

Anthropic’s revenue share is even higher among companies spending on AI for the first time.

“Anthropic has definitely been on a tear,” Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s economist, told Sherwood News. “Its increase in adoption rates has been driven by its ability to sell to less technical users and smaller contracts than it typically has.”

It’s notable that midway through the first quarter, Anthropic had a falling-out with one of its biggest customers, the US government, which near the end of February decided to shun Anthropic’s products and lean into working with OpenAI.

Jon Keegan

4/16/26

Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7, with better coding, better vision, and occasional doom loops

The incremental update of Anthropic’s most capable public model includes steady improvements to coding and new ways to blow past your token budget.

Tunnel. Optical illusion. Abstract striped background. Vector illustration.

Jon Keegan4/16/26

Report: Google ditches its objection to defense work, pitches Gemini to Pentagon

In 2018, Google employees protested against the company’s tech being used for the US military’s Project Maven — a drone targeting program — reminding the company of its “don’t be evil” motto.

After the controversy, the company declined to renew the contract with the Pentagon, drawing a bright line between Big Tech and the national security establishment.

What a difference a few years makes.

Google is now actively working to get its Gemini AI model to be used in classified national security settings, according to a new report from The Information. Seeking a similar deal to the one OpenAI hashed out with the Pentagon, Google reportedly wants a contract that allows use of Gemini in classified work, but with a prohibition on mass domestic surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons.

But Google is playing catch-up in a major way. Amazon and Microsoft both have been widely used for classified defense work, and contractors are already experienced in working with their cloud systems, while Google’s services have never been used in classified work.

Google and Pentagon Discuss Classified AI Deal as Company Rebuilds Military Ties