How Do I Use AI for Studying: Do’s and Don'ts Guide

AI in Education

10 min read

How Do I Use AI for Studying: Do’s and Don'ts Guide

In this article, we have reviewed advanced and diversified use of AI technologies for scheduling, research, and writing college tasks.

Written by

Catherine B.

Published on

Mar 18, 2025

Table of contents

OpenAI Education Insights: How Do Students Use ChatGPT?
Students Take on Using AI for Studies
Advanced Do’s to Make the Most Out of AI
The Don'ts of Using AI to Study (“How Not To” Guide)
How to Blend AI with Traditional Study Methods?
Sum Up

Table of contents

OpenAI Education Insights: How Do Students Use ChatGPT?
Students Take on Using AI for Studies
Advanced Do’s to Make the Most Out of AI
The Don'ts of Using AI to Study (“How Not To” Guide)
How to Blend AI with Traditional Study Methods?
Sum Up

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To use AI for studying effectively, you should clearly define your academic load, preferred learning methods, and acquaintance level with AI tools.

Usually, students only use Chat GPT by OpenAI to automate their brainstorming, research, and writing processes. However, using one instrument for all academic tasks is not the most effective way of becoming an A-grade student.

Here are some statistics: according to an OpenAI research report, you will need more AI literacy for your future employment, as “over 70% of business leaders say they would hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills over a more experienced one without.”

So, how can you prepare for an AI-driven world while staying ahead of your studies?

In this article, StudyPro will list the most useful AI tools for different tasks, discuss wise diversified ways to use AI for students, and share new OpenAI report insights.

OpenAI Education Insights: How Do Students Use ChatGPT?

In February 2025, OpenAI launched an insightful report on how US students use Chat GPT. Here are the key takeaways:

“Over one-third of 18- to 24-year-olds in the US use ChatGPT.”
The main ways students use AI systems are “starting papers and projects, summarizing texts, exploring topics, and brainstorming creative ideas.”
The next most common applications are “writing assistance, one-off questions, computer programming support, and how-to advice.”

These findings give valuable hints on how to avoid getting replaced by AI. As for now, AI models still mainly perform as a retrieval-augmentation power. When you type a query, the system retrieves relevant documents, and then the AI summarizes or rephrases them for you.

However, technologies have quickly progressed toward actual problem-solving and agentic AIs. So, here are the skills you need to develop as a student to stay ahead of AI tech:

Problem solving. Prepare yourself to engineer solutions, not talk about them.
Critical thinking. Generative AI benefits come with frauds and deepfakes. Equip yourself with skills to sort true and false.
Creative thinking. When you have found the solution, find three more, just for the practice.
AI literacy. The more you know about AI and technology, the better off you will be.
Integrative thinking. You will need the ability to integrate diverse non-connected resources and knowledge, which is the basis of the current AI engineering profession.

Students Take on Using AI for Studies

Usually, students use AI in a fragmented way for different assignment aspects, such as:

→ Using generative AI for outlines, proofreading, research, and writing

→ Using free AI tutoring for final and midterm exams, quizzing, flashcards, and active recalling

→ Using generative AI to acquire structured data for self-education

However, while writing this article, we counted up to 200 different ways students can use AI to streamline their college lives. The current common usage of AI in students hardly covers half its potential.

So, let’s disassemble first how students already use AI for their studies, according to the OpenAI report:

Category	Students Use ChatGPT For:
Learning and tutoring (¼ of all messages)	Brainstorming creative projects (45%), exploring topics (44%), exam preparations (38%), academic research (37%), tutoring (32%), science research (27%), create lesson plans (23%), language learning (23%), organizing schedules (14%).
Writing help	Starting papers/projects (49%), summarizing long texts (48%), revising and editing writing (44%), essay drafting (31%).
Miscellaneous questions	Mathematical problem-solving (42%), career-related writing (31%), exam answers (27%), career advice (19%), predicting a grade (18%), relationship advice (16%), job search (13%), mental and physical health help (13%), social media content (10%).
Programming help	Computer programming (15%).

What is the takeaway from these statistics?

AI technologies have already become an everyday life aid for many students, which doesn’t ensure their efficiency. OpenAI study shows students load Chat GPT with all sorts of repetitive tasks, from research to writing. But in 2025, there will be more efficient ways for students to use AI products.

How can I use AI safely? Learn more about all the pros and cons of AI to stay on the safe side of academics.

Advanced Do’s to Make the Most Out of AI

To make the most out of AI as a college student, you should know how to use AI smartly. To do so, you will need to account for three criteria:

✔️ What academic goals do I have for this semester and a year?

✔️ What are the best AI tools for studying plans, note-taking, research, writing, and studying material?

✔️ What are the top do’s and don’ts of using AI to study I need to take into account before I start?

Before we analyze all do’s and dont’s, here are the most common academic goals and AI tools that may help you:

Academic Task	AI Tools
Personal studying plans, homework planners	StudyPro homework planner, mymap.ai, Notion, Todoist AI
Note-taking, text-to-voice, and voice-to-text transcribers	Cockatoo, Speechnotes, Ekkotalk, NaturalReaders, ElevenLabs
Academic research, paraphrasing, summarizing tools	StudyPro, Mindgrasp, Coursable, Elicit, Semantic Scholar, JenniAI
Quizzes, flashcards, exam preparation tests	Study Snail, Remember Quick, Quizlet
Writing assistants, editing, proofreading, grammar and style checkers	StudyPro, Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grammarly, Hemingway
Citation and bibliography generators	Zotero, Citation machine, Quillbot
Plagiarism detection tools	StudyPro, ZeroGPT, Grammarly, Quetext, Copyleaks
AI mind-mapping, note-organization, second brain	Notion, GitMind, NoteGPT

Use AI as Your Personalized Learning Assistant

The first problem students face when entering college is feeling overwhelmed with administrative tasks while also trying to catch up on the starting course lectures. You can use Notion AI, Obsidian, Todoist AI, mymap.ai, or StudyPro homework planner to handle administrative tasks.

Here is an example of applying Notion AI for studies:

General Applications	AI Functions
Organizing and storing lectures, appointments, course info, paperwork	AI summaries of your notes
Scheduling classes, homework, professor meetings, and extracurricular activities	Asking questions about the notes
Keeping track of all deadlines and meeting degree requirements	Searching lost items

💡 We recommend choosing several AI tools best suited for different academic and administrative activities. The best way on how to use AI effectively in your everyday life is to develop a whole studying ecosystem where each tool best suits a particular task.

Build an Effective Note-taking System With AI

Second, you will need note-taking assistants to stay organized and retain all important information across your courses. Here are some AI application ideas for organizing your studies:

Converting lecture recordings into text
Using reversed text-to-voice transcribers if you are an audial type of learner
Structuring notes with AI-generated summaries and key points
Organizing study materials into an accessible and searchable format
Syncing notes across devices for easy access anytime

You can try Cockatoo, Speechnotes, Ekkotalk, NaturalReaders, and ElevenLabs for these tasks.

Incorporate AI for Credible Research

Another way of using free AI for studying is finding, analyzing, and summarizing academic sources, saving you hours of manual research. Here’s how you can automate research with AI:

Tool	What Does the Tool Do?
Mindgrasp	Summarises research papers, articles, and academic content. Supports uploaded PDF documents or website links. Allows asking questions about the paper and helps search through the content.
Elicit	Finds relevant papers even without exact keyword matches across different search engines, helps you refine search queries, and extracts data from PDFs upon request. The tool gathers, screens, and extracts data to your exact requirement and then presents the finished report with a direct answer to your question across different papers.
Semantic Scholar	Provides a vast collection of research papers, generates citations, offers automated summaries of the scholar’s papers.
JenniAI	Summarizes, rephrases, and rewrites the research findings.

Employ AI for Your Exam Preparation

The best way of preparation is active recall, which uses flashcards with tools such as Quizlet or Study Snail. Here are a few tips on how AI products make flashcards a more effective method:

→ First, prepare your studying notes. Make sure you have extracted the accurate data you will be tested on. Then, review your textbooks, notes, and research materials.

→ Use summarizing tools only to extract the most important information.

→ Use Quizlet to make flashcards from notes.

→ Carefully review your flashcards. Use the space method in your repetition and active recalling instead of reading aloud.

→ Prompt tools like ChatGPT to quiz you. With each next revision, concentrate only on the things you got wrong the first time.

💡 How to study using AI quickly, so that you don’t fall behind in a fast-paced world? We recommend subscribing to the resources of top players in the industry. For instance, you can access OpenAI publications to see what is new with Chat GPT.

Use AI Writing and Editing Assistance

The top three AI tools competing for writing and editing assistance are ChatGPT by OpenAI, Gemini by Google, and Claude by Antrophic. Here’s how you can best use different AI models for your outlining, brainstorming, writing, and editing tasks:

Tool	Pros and Cons	Best Used For
Chat GPT	Chat GPT works best for general-knowledge queries and structured answers. It also performs well when customizing the content to your request; analyzing and summarizing your input. However, it may generate outdated or occasionally incorrect information.	Idea generation, brainstorming, outline, writing, editing, self-education.
Gemini	Gemini is good at factual real-time research and proving sources as it is integrated with Google search. However, it can’t reason well, and may be rigid in tone. It is not the best tool for answering your open self-educational questions.	Technical writing, fact-checking, research.
Claude	Claude AI performs well in understanding and answering nuanced questions and reasoning. It also maintains consistency in tone and quality even through long exchanges, which is not the case with Chat GPT. The tool cannot access the internet, though.	Solid, in-depth answers, good reasoning, acquiring more interesting and original answers to the questions.

Learn more: How to use AI to write essays

Make Citation Generation Quick and Easy

Using AI in education helps you streamline usually tedious processes. For instance, citing papers requires an attentive approach, as you need to keep an eye on multiple details:

Required style manual
Author details: correct name and surname (which may come with struggles of different alphabetical symbols for diverse languages)
Date of publishing and retrieval date
Correct source citing, which usually includes title, volume, issue, and series for citing journals and similar tedious details for books, databases, and online resources

However, you can simplify the process using tools like Citation Machine, QuillbotAI, and Zotero.

Make Sure to Use Plagiarism and AI Checkers

Using AI tools does not guarantee that the text will be marked as AI-generated or plagiarized.

The main way plagiarism and AI checkers can detect your work is through repetitive phrases and direct citations without credentials.

Here are some tips on how to avoid being accused of plagiarism and AI-written text:

Check for the most common AI-generated phrases and sentence structures. For example, the overuse of wordy phrases like “furthermore, in addition to this, it is also worth mentioning” is a common sign.
Always paraphrase or provide sources. Plagiarism checkers can mark up to 30% of plagiarism if they find only a few brief quotations without referencing the source.
Run the text through the Hemingway editor if you use AI text generation. This powerful tool suggests more human-like text flow and word choice, undoing the artificial style.

💡 Using AI tools does not guarantee that the text will be marked as AI-generated or plagiarized, and not using one does not guarantee that you will not be accused, either.

Let AI Assist You as a Second Brain

Finally, to stay on top of your studies, you need tools that act as your second brain, saving all the information from your years of studying. Usually, students have a few needs regarding information management:

✔️ Capturing, transcribing, and organizing notes

✔️ Idea management and knowledge linking

✔️ Summarizing and processing information

✔️ Getting insights from the documents quickly

Most students would start with Notion or Obsidian as a basis, but you can also add Mindgrasp for PDF analysis, Cockatoo for transcribing, and EdrawMax or MindMeister for creating mindmaps.

The Don'ts of Using AI to Study (“How Not To” Guide)

The key principles of ethical AI use are simple:

❌ Don’t blindly trust AI-generated information;

❌ Don’t let AI do the whole work instead of you; don’t let it steal your critical and creative thinking;

❌ Don’t cheat; use AI tools wisely;

❌ Don’t use AI for final writing. Only go for its researching, brainstorming, and editing assistance;

❌ Don’t fall behind the development of modern technologies;

❌ Don’t use it for unethical purposes;

❌ Don’t feed too personal or sensitive data to AI;

❌ Don’t let AI overshadow your originality.

But how do I use AI at all, if there are so many dont’s? Let’s uncover the simplest ways to check out each don’t on the list.

Don't Blindly Trust AI-Generated Information

Here is a check-list to verify AI-generated information:

Ask AI to provide the sources it used
Compare the answers with other models’ responses
Do your own research
Check credible resources, including academic journals, books, official state data, or verified statistics centers, like McKinsey & Company.

Don’t Let AI Work Instead of You

To make sure that you don’t lose your critical thinking skills while studying with AI, try to balance between your own capacities and relying on AI support. Here’s an example of balancing your own work and AI support:

Measure your usual workload. How long does it take you to perform particular tasks, like coming up with ideas for an essay or editing?
Separate tiresome tasks from easier ones. After the assessment, choose the most boring, manual, and time-consuming tasks to delegate to AI.
Delegate. Everything left after crossing out most mundane tasks is what you should do yourself.

💡 Professional development amongst students is the main reason for the discussing why AI should not be used in education. It is partly a matter of ethics and partly a matter of concern for the future of those using AI unethically.

Don’t Cheat

Using AI to study without cheating is possible if you only use large language models to help you with the “backlog,” which is the tasks that are not directly visible in your final draft.

For example, the final paper does not show where you took your resources from or how you educated yourself on a topic and came up with ideas. However, if you use AI for writing the text, it will show in style, word choice, sentence structure, and tone of voice.

Don’t Use AI for Final Writing

If you don’t want to get caught using AI for writing essays but still desperately need help with this task, separate the work into two steps:

→ First, let AI craft the first draft for you. Revise it a few times, and write simple text prompts for AI to improve all the mistakes and tone imperfections you notice.

→ Then, rephrase the AI-generated text to your final draft. Add your personality and reflections on the topic to rephrasing, making the text sound more natural and original.

Learn more: How to Paraphrase Sentences, Quotes, and Paragraphs

Don’t Fall Behind the Globe’s Pace

Here’s an unexpected take: Students who fear being replaced by AI by the time they graduate are actually at a great advantage over their graduated peers.

How to not get replaced by AI?

If you are still in college, you have a chance to observe the industry and modify your studying objectives. At the same time, prospective employees entering the market these years do not have the resources to observe, take notes, and prepare for further AI advancement.

Take your chance as a student and save time by observing the trends and making decisions about where to move next.

Don’t Use AI for Unethical Purposes

Is using AI to study bad? Not, not inherently. Unethical purposes in using AI only refer to any activity that exploits AI tools to bypass genuine learning, critical thinking, or ethical responsibilities. So, to use AI ethically, you only need to ensure two points:

You are actually learning. Using AI tools does not take off of your acquiring knowledge and only makes the process faster.
You do not exploit AI against general morality. This means not using technology to harass, endanger, manipulate other people, or spread false information.

As long as these two criteria are intact, you are using AI ethically.

Don’t Upload Sensitive and Personal Data

If you want to protect your privacy while using AI, never upload the following types of information to ChatGPt or any other model:

Personal Identifiable Information (PII): Full name, home address, phone number, email, ID numbers, or social security numbers.
Financial data: Bank account details, credit card numbers, transaction history, or investment records.
Confidential work or academic documents: Proprietary company information, unpublished research, exam questions, or personal notes from sensitive projects.
Passwords and login credentials: Any username-password combinations, API keys, or access tokens.
Biometric data: Fingerprints, facial recognition scans, or voice samples.
Location data: Live location sharing, home/work addresses, or travel plans.

💡 When using AI apps that work with audio, video, and photo or while discussing your travel plans with AI, you are not in acute direct risk. However, when sharing your data, remember one rule: what gets to the internet stays on the internet. Once you upload any data, you cannot track where it’s being saved.

Don’t Let AI Overshadow Your Originality

Finally, if you want to preserve your individuality and originality while also benefiting from artificial intelligence, set aside some spaces in your life purposely devoted to art and play; it can be a part of your academic assignments or just a hobby.

In both cases, the only thing that will preserve your originality is exercising regularly.

How to Blend AI with Traditional Study Methods?

The emergence of advanced retrieval-augmentation technologies does not cancel the centuries of helpful collective effort in education.

You can blend traditional studying methods, such as active recalling, spaced repetitions, and Feynman techniques, with using AI to study for students.

Here are the examples of how the two systems can enhance your studying:

Traditional Studying Technique	Usual Method of Use	AI-Enhanced Method
Active recall	Self-quizzing by trying to recall information without looking at notes.	AI-powered flashcard apps like Quizlet or Study Snail generate personalized quizzes.
Spaced repetition	Reviewing material at increasing intervals to reinforce memory.	Tools like Anki or Remember Quick adjust review schedules based on your learning progress.
Feynman technique	Teaching a concept in simple terms to identify gaps in understanding.	Using chatbots like Chat GPT or Claude either to simulate an audience or explain the topic to you.
The “5 Why” Method	Asking "why" questions to deepen understanding.	Using AI research assistants like Elicit to provide context for your questions.
Self-explanation	Explaining complex concepts to yourself until you understand each part.	Using tools like Notion AI to first summarize and then explain complex topics to you.
Multimodal learning	Using different senses (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) for better memory recall.	Using AI-generated mind maps (e.g., EdrawMax, MindMeister) or image-based flashcards.
Pomodoro technique	Breaks study time into intervals (usually 25 minutes), followed by short breaks.	Setting AI-powered task management tools to track the time for you.

Learn more: StudyPro AI writer trained on 1 billion+ academic papers knows more about academic writing from practice than any course ever could.

Sum Up

OpenAI research insights disclosed an important insight into current trends: AI technologies have become what “computer literacy” once was - an absolute necessity of employment. The education institutions also catch up on the shift, establishing mandatory courses in the upcoming curriculums on how students should be using AI to study.

In fast-paced circumstances, it is most beneficial for students to educate themselves with AI while they are still in college. AI literacy becomes one of the most solid guarantees that one will not be replaced in the near future by peers more lucky to have a proper access to AI-related knowledge.

Frequently asked questions

To start using AI for studying, do these three steps:

Establish your key academic goals for the semester or year;
Choose the most fitting AI tools;
Check all do’s and don'ts of using AI before you start applying technologies for studying.

Yes, it is okay to use AI to study. The best way to stay ethical is to apply artificial intelligence for “backlog” tasks that do not show in your final draft. Examples of such tasks are outlining, research, brainstorming, self-education, and planning.

You can use AI in a few ways for your education:

To create customized studying plans;
To take notes, transcribe audio lectures and podcasts to text and quizzes;
Academic research, collecting credible sources;
Exam preparation, learning, and recalling information;
As writing, editing, and grammar-checking assistants;
To avoid plagiarism, to generate bibliography and citations;
To organize and archive information.

The main ways how AI can help with your studying is by simplifying manual tasks such as citation generation, searching for sources, or paraphrasing your citations.

The most effective way of applying artificial intelligence for better results is diversification. Modern tools are not yet capable of providing all-in-one solutions, so it’s best to use separate tools for different purposes.

Sources:

AI in education

AI innovations

AI for writing