The rise of AI technology has created new opportunities for Chinese companies venturing overseas - homework assistance. With a wealth of accumulated question banks and Large Language Models (LLMs) over the years, Chinese enterprises are expanding their presence and competing with live tutors in the U.S.
Today, when American students encounter challenging calculus problems, they can simply open apps like Answer AI, Question AI, and Gauth on their phones, snap a picture of the question, and within seconds, see the step-by-step solution process.
Interestingly, all these products originate from China.
According to media reports, just over a year ago, a high school student named Evan in Houston used to search through lengthy YouTube videos to solve homework problems, while also spending $60 per hour on tutoring.
However, Evan later discovered that the annual subscription fee for Answer AI was also around $60, so he no longer hired a tutor and almost entirely relied on AI for homework assistance.
Based on data from Data.ai on May 21st, among the top 20 educational applications in the U.S. App Store, 5 are artificial intelligence applications that help students complete school assignments, including Answer AI. The founding team of this product has previously worked at Xiaomi and Byte. Additionally, two other homework assistance apps, Question AI and Gauth, which rank high on the download charts, come from Homework Help and ByteDance respectively.
According to market research firm SensorTower, since its launch in 2019, Question AI has been downloaded over 6 million times on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the U.S., while Gauth has twice the number of installations since its launch.
Ric Zhou, the founder of Answer AI, mentioned to the media that the advantages of AI tutoring are evident; it is a product that promotes educational equity. The $60 per hour tutoring service in Houston is much more affordable than in the Bay Area, where prices could be tripled.
He also stated that AI can provide more personalized teaching, which is challenging to achieve in a classroom with 20 students. AI teachers can remember students' learning habits, answer questions without getting frustrated, and can replace private tutors hired by affluent families.
A high school junior in Houston told the media that since using AI for learning assistance, her math grades have improved from 85 to 95 within six months.
Currently, AI tutoring mainly involves text-based interactions, but soon, they will be able to converse with students in a way that suits each student's learning style, being more empathetic, humorous, and creative. OpenAI's GPT-4o has already shown the potential to interact with students in various tones.
Chinese manufacturers have a leading edge due to their years of development in the online education market and the vast question banks they have accumulated. For instance, Answer AI can enhance answer accuracy and avoid illusions through "Retrieval-Augmented Generation" (RAG), a method that fine-tunes LLMs using specific domain knowledge (in this case, extensive question banks). Established companies like Homework Help can combine generative AI with searching in question banks to improve accuracy, while newcomers need to find alternative paths.
Ric Zhou further emphasizes:
