An Emory University student is suing the school after it suspended him and two classmates for creating an AI studying tool.
Emory initially applauded Benjamin Craver, Karam Khanna, and Shaan Bhasin for Eightball, an AI-powered flashcard generator, and awarded its creators a $10,000 prize to fund further development. But when the students added a feature that connected Eightball to online education system Canvas, the school suspended them.
The Canvas addition allowed Eightball users to find answers to their study questions in the course material. Previously, students had to manually upload course material to Eightball for the AI to generate flashcards.
“Eightball helps you study and can answer questions when you’re confused,” the project’s website reads. “Our AI connects to Canvas and studies your slides, readings, and modules. Our AI is always accurate because it’s based off your course and always shows its sources from Canvas.”
In November 2023, however, Emory notified Eightball’s creators of alleged Honor Code and Code of Conduct violations, supposedly because Eightball “could be used for cheating.” The AI tool was subsequently shut down, according to the lawsuit Craver filed earlier this month. He asked the court to remain anonymous in the suit, but the court rejected the request.
The tool was created to help students save time while studying. “[As students], we’re at the intersection of understanding the current technology coming out, and the actual student experience, as in the pain points and the difficulty parts,” Khanna previously told The Emory Wheel last year. “Our goal is to merge those two together, and build the first kind of app that leverages AI to build a whole suite of services for students.”
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A now-deleted article published on Emory’s Goizueta Business School website in June 2023 had a headline dubbing Eightball an AI-powered “study tool.” But now the school sees Eightball as a dangerous tool that could put academic integrity at risk, even though the university admitted that there is “no evidence that anyone has ever used Eightball to cheat,” according to the lawsuit.
PCMag has reached out to Emory University for comment.
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