The brief launch of an app promising to attend students’ lectures as well as write their assignments caused some academics to despair at a dystopian near-future in which learning becomes a pointless sham. But others believe the abyss can be bypassed. Juliette Rowsell reports.
(7 Apr 2026) The launch of Einstein AI in February was seen by many academics as the sudden and premature realisation of their worst nightmare.
The edtech tool promised to log into students’ virtual learning environments every day to watch their lectures, read essays, write papers, participate in discussions and submit their “homework”.
The tool prompted an online cry of horror from educators, who branded it “eduwashing” and an “AI cheating company”. In a Bluesky post that elicited more than 700 reposts, Aparna Nair, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, voiced the question that many colleagues were asking themselves faced with the prospect of their students lazing in bed while a machine did all their studying for them: “What even is the fucking point?”
Read more here.
