Educational technology startup Study Fetch LLC today launched what it says is the industry’s first conversational, artificial intelligence-powered tutor to help students to learn about almost any kind of topic within any subject.

Tutor Me is essentially a kind of ChatGPT that’s built specifically to aid education. Students will be able to interact with Tutor Me in the same way as they would with a personal, human tutor in a web conference-style setting, asking questions about whatever it is they’re studying and receiving responses in real time.

The startup says Tutor Me has the advantage of always being present, whenever a student is learning, and infinitely patient with their questions, able to break things down into easily understandable chunks and respond to multiple follow-up queries on the same topic.

Besides just asking questions of the study material, students can also ask it to test their knowledge by automatically creating quiz questions relating to the learning material, so they can measure their progress. For each topic, Tutor Me can create a personalized learning plan, with specific milestones and goals for the student to work towards.

In addition, Tutor Me will even help students by grading their essays for them, providing feedback and suggestions so they can make improvements before they hand it in to their real, human teacher.

There are fine-grained controls too, so a student can simply tell it to “speak faster” or “speak slower” to adjust the pace at which it explains each topic.

What’s unique about Tutor Me is that every interaction is based on the student’s own course material. To get started, the student simply uploads their course work first, so StudyFetch can analyze it and understand exactly what it is that they need to learn. The company said its platform integrates with numerous learning management systems to enable the direct import of coursework, streamlining the process.

Education is an area that’s ripe for AI-powered disruption, said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc., and it’s exciting to see the progress made by startups like StudyFetch.

“It’s trying to make learning a more individualized experience, and what sets it apart is that users can upload their own learning materials and then get it to ask them test questions based on that content,” the analyst explained. “It’s a promising approach that could make learning a much more personal and interactive process, which has proven to be successful, with higher learning rates, when delivered by human tutors.”

StudyFetch Director of Social Impact Sam Whitaker said one of the company’s core principles is that every student deserves an opportunity to succeed, and that means studying in a personalized way that best supports their learning.

“Our mission is to create an equal opportunity for every student, through personalized offerings, affordable prices and innovative technology for all,” he said.

Image: StudyFetch