Did a fourth grader write this? Or the New Chatbot?

"I'll just say he's a student and prepare for my soul to be crushed."

Did a fifth grader write this? Or the New Chatbot?

Don't be surprised if you can't always tell. Neither did a fourth grade teacher - or Judy Blume.

It's hard to fully grasp the huge potential of ChatGPT, a new artificial intelligence chatbot launched last month. The bot doesn't just search and summarize information that already exists. He creates new content, tailored to your demand, often with a surprising degree of nuance, humor and creativity. Most of us have never seen anything like it outside of science fiction.

To better understand what ChatGPT can do, we decided to see if people could tell the difference between bot handwriting and child handwriting.

We used real essay prompts from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the Department of Education's standardized test, known as the National Report Card). We had the bot produce essays based on these prompts - sometimes with a bit of coaching, and always telling it to write like an age-appropriate student. We put what he wrote side by side with sample answers written by real kids.

We asked experts in children's handwriting to take our variation of the Turing test, live during a call with us. He was a fourth grade teacher; a professional writing tutor; a Stanford education professor; and Judy Blume, the beloved children's author. None of them could tell each time whether a child or a robot wrote the essay. See how you are doing.