Old Scona Academic students use AI for Valentine's Day cards

High school students from Old Scona Academic put their computers to work to generate hundreds of Valentine’s Day cards using an AI.

ChatGPT is a chat bot AI that was released in November 2022. While many critics of the software accuse the AI of plagiarism and other acts of academic misconduct, some students from Old Scona have found a new, positive function for the popular AI.

“Our project is generating Valentine’s Day cards using ChatCPT for every student in the school, so no one’s excluded,” explained Oliver Chen, a grade 11 student. “There’s 369 students in our school and we’ve written a card for every single one of them and additionally all the teachers as well.”

Chen told CTV News Edmonton how they implemented ChatGPT in their thoughtful project.

“We first gathered around 45 volunteers at our school who knew the other people at our school who could write complements for every individual in our school, and that would help ChatGPT understand who an individual was,” said Chen.

Using this method, ChatGPT could write personalized poems for every student, including David Liu, who appreciated the chat bot’s ability to accurately write to any specific student.

“This card highlights my volleyball skills and my 3D printing as well as just my general personality and it makes me feel really appreciated by my peers and my friends,” said Liu.

Jeff Karas, a computer science teacher at Old Scona Academic, was impressed with the AI and how the students’ were utilizing the technology.

“When we talked about it, the importance of it was to understand that our students are having the opportunity to use it but using it in ethical and responsible ways … If you type in certain topics or categories, it’ll come up with stuff for you,” explained Karas.

The success of the Valentine’s project proved that there are ethical and wholesome ways to use the technology to brighten someone’s day and for other upcoming projects.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Marek Tkach