With the exam season coming up, you might be feeling stressed and slowly overwhelmed. That is a natural reaction as exams are always challenging. Having to prepare for multiple exams at once can be particularly stressful as you need to juggle various subjects and topics while ensuring you've covered everything adequately. AI promises quick summaries, automated flashcards, and instant explanations—but can it truly replace human understanding?

While you can incorporate AI tools and techniques into your revision strategy, the quality, accuracy, and depth of learning will never match what you gain from expert academic guidance.

Let’s take a look at some common ways students use AI for revision sessions and why human expertise is always a safer choice.

AI Text-Summarisation Tools

Preparing for an exam draws on your capacity to summarise research papers or large chunks of information and extract the most essential points.

AI text-summarisation tools such as AskYourPDF, Summarize Bot, or QuillBot use advanced algorithms to analyse large amounts of text and generate concise summaries that capture the main ideas and key concepts.

However, these tools often miss nuance, omit key arguments, and fail to contextualise ideas accurately. Relying on them can give you an incomplete or even misleading understanding of your subject matter.

AI-Powered Flashcards

Many students benefit from creating flashcards to facilitate their learning and memory recall but find it too time-consuming to create them manually. AI platforms such as Anki and Revisely allow you to upload a PDF that includes your learning material and then make custom flashcards for you.

Watch out, though: AI-generated flashcards lack the depth and personalisation that come from creating them yourself. Simply being handed AI-generated flashcards removes an essential part of the learning process: the act of writing, organising, and recalling information on your own. True learning comes from active engagement, not passive consumption.

AI Quizzes and Exam Generators

In the past, it was universities that were the sole providers of quizzes and tests to help you prepare for an exam. Today, you can use AI apps to develop such quizzes yourself. For example, QuizBot or QuizGecko apps, create custom exams and quizzes based on the content you provide.

The catch? these quizzes often lack accuracy, fail to mimic real exam conditions, and do not align with the marking criteria used by universities. Worse still, AI-generated questions can be vague, irrelevant, or misleading. If you want to test your knowledge effectively, you need practice questions designed by experts—not an algorithm that cannot evaluate academic standards.

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ChatGPT for Explanations

If you are unsure about the meaning of your exam material, you could simply ask ChatGPT to explain. Alternatively, you can summarise your understanding of specific topics and ask ChatGPT to provide you feedback, such as by identifying mistakes or inconsistencies in your comprehension. This will help you gain a better understanding of challenging topics for your exam.

Always keep in mind, however, that AI does not think critically—it generates responses based on existing data, often producing inaccurate, shallow, or misleading answers. Would you trust an AI model that doesn’t understand your exam syllabus to guide your revision?

AI-generated Study Timetable

A trick to passing exams is organising your time to ensure you study enough while managing to integrate studying into your daily schedule. If you are not skilled in making timetables, AI can help. Although many non-AI-powered apps can craft a timetable, it may be simplest to ask ChatGPT to create one. You will need to specify how many hours you can dedicate to studying per day and what other activities need to be accounted for in your schedule.

Using AI to create a study timetable might seem convenient, but a generic, one-size-fits-all plan won’t account for your individual strengths, weaknesses, or study habits. A truly effective study strategy requires reflection, adaptability, and guidance from experts who understand how to structure revision properly.

Takeaway Message

The bottom line? AI might seem like a quick and easy solution, but when it comes to real learning, nothing beats human expertise. Don’t risk walking into your exams with only partial knowledge from AI-generated summaries and quizzes.

Instead of trusting AI to do the thinking for you, work with expert tutors who can guide you through difficult topics.
Our one-to-one tutoring service connects you with academics who have an in-depth understanding of your subject and can help you develop strong critical thinking skills—something AI simply cannot provide.
Learn more about our tutoring services