“Goodbye, homework,” tweeted Mr Elon Musk after the launch of ChatGPT, a bot that writes plausible answers and even rhyming poetry. This kind of generative artificial intelligence sparks fear, loathing and awe in equal measure. But it is the world of education that is most spooked.

Since OpenAI launched the ChatGPT language-generation model before Christmas, New York’s public schools have banned pupils from using it. In Australia, universities are planning a return to supervised pen and paper examinations to evade the chatbot fakes.