Study finds students who use AI often score lower at school
A new OECD PISA study finds that students who use AI tools to study generally perform worse than those who don't, though moderate and intentional use paired with critical evaluation skills can reverse that trend.
The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has released new findings showing that students who use artificial intelligence tools to help with schoolwork tend to score lower overall than those who don't. The study draws on 2025 data from more than 760,000 15-year-old students across 91 countries, making it the first major assessment conducted since AI tools became widely used among students.
After accounting for socioeconomic background, students who never use AI generally outperformed AI users in science. The size of the gap depended heavily on how AI was used: students relying on it to summarize reading material or draft written assignments saw the biggest drops in performance, while those using it for preliminary research or general learning support fared relatively better.
How often students used AI also mattered. Both very infrequent users (once or twice a year) and daily users tended to score worst, while those using AI on a monthly or weekly basis performed comparatively better.
Where AI helps
Students who used AI weekly for general learning support slightly outperformed non-users. That advantage grew more pronounced among students who were regularly trained to critically evaluate the quality of AI-generated content — in those cases, all frequent AI users for general learning support outperformed non-users. The study's authors suggest this points to a potential benefit from moderate, intentional AI use in education.
OECD director of education and skills Andreas Schleicher noted that learning happens not through consuming content but through the mind's productive struggle with new material, and that technology should support rather than bypass that process.
The study also found AI use is more common among students from wealthier backgrounds, likely reflecting better access to devices, reliable internet, and paid tools. Adoption varies sharply by country — over 95 percent of Vietnamese students reported using AI, compared with about 60 percent in Japan. Notably, curiosity levels were found to correlate with AI use, peaking among daily users, though this hasn't yet translated into consistently better academic results.
