Western University business school reviewing use of AI tutor by professors - Toronto Star

A student walks past Sydenham Hall on the Western University campus in London, Ont., on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nicole Osborne

The business school at Western University is reviewing the use of an artificial intelligence tutor in one course after students raised concerns about the cost and reliability of the chatbot.

Ivey Business School’s associate dean for programs, Martha Maznevski, said in a statement the school is aware of the concerns surrounding course materials for the global macroeconomics for managers class and is reviewing the matter.

“Ivey Business School supports the thoughtful use of technologies, including AI, to enhance teaching and learning, while adhering to Western’s policies and guidelines for technology, privacy and data management,” she wrote.

Fourth-year student Daniel Wang said the class textbook was replaced earlier this fall with an AI tutor called Ask GMM and students have been asked to pay $72 to access the chatbot after they already paid a $750 course materials fee.

Wang said students who took the class in previous years accessed the same course materials through the university’s learning system, but this year’s class materials are available behind a separate paywall.

“Our professors only post the specific materials from the textbook, which are known as primers, on this exact platform itself,” he said.

“Basically, it is a paywalled resource, but we need to utilize this resource for studying and completing our course.”

Wang said students in his class were not told about needing to use the AI tutor in the first week of school and were asked to use it on Sept. 15.

He said the chatbot, developed by the professor, was not reliable and it had issues as students were studying for midterms.

“There is one textbook in the library,” he said. “The professor who developed this platform actually recently said that they are going to remove any printed copies ... he told us that ‘you can probably guess the reason why.’” 

Wang said students need to create external accounts on a separate website to access class materials, which raises concerns about the privacy and safety of their data and how their interactions with the AI tool are collected, stored and accessed.

“They’re using both Anthropic’s models and Google models to process the questions and all of the course material in itself, so that poses another issue ... how are these companies gonna be using our data in that regard?”  

Professors Kirsten Cornelson and Tony Frost said they are piloting the AI tool in their class this year and the fee students must pay covers the cost of building and using the tool. 

“We are not profiting from this. Any surplus will be donated to the (honours business administration) program,” the professors said in an email to The Canadian Press.

“Because we recognize that the $72 may be out of reach from some students, we have also provided free access through the Ivey library,” they said.

Cornelson and Frost didn’t respond to questions about the potential risks of the new AI tool to students’ privacy and data security. 

In an email to students on Oct. 29, just after the midterms, Frost noted that he could see they were studying hard because the AI tutor “recorded thousands of engagements with practice questions and exams.”

Wang said practice exams have also been posted on the AI tutor, and the professors said their usage would be representative of how the actual exams are marked.

“So students who don’t pay for this tool do not have access to any of those materials at all,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2026.