AI Teachers Take the Podium: How Digital Professors and Virtual Tutors Are Revolutionizing Education
Jill Watson, a virtual teaching assistant built on IBM Watson, debuted at Georgia Tech in 2016 to answer routine online course questions. Khanmigo, launched in 2023 by Khan Academy and built on GPT-4, is an AI tutor and teacher’s assistant now available by subscription in 2025 and tested in classrooms such as Oklahoma. Squirrel AI, founded in 2014 in China, uses a Large Adaptive Model and by 2025 runs over 3,000 learning centers, has data from more than 24 million students and 10 billion learning behaviors, and claims 50% faster mastery. In spring 2024 HKUST introduced 10 AI-generated lecturers to