AI Tutors & LLM-Powered Education

LLMs have changed education more than any other tech in 50 years. The 2024-26 landscape is unsettled: every district is piloting something, accuracy-vs-hallucination is real, and copyright / training-data debates are unresolved. This page is a snapshot. For self-hosting your own AI assistant see Self-hosted AI / LLM; for AI-detection see Plagiarism & AI Detection; for related course authoring AI features.

Student-facing AI tutors

★ Khanmigo (Khan Academy) — paid (with free for US teachers + Title-1 districts as of 2024); GPT-4-class tutor inside Khan Academy; conversational + Socratic; doesn't give answers; the most pedagogy-aware deployment so far.
Duolingo Max — paid; GPT-4-class language conversation roleplay; see Language Learning.
Speak — paid; AI English tutor; popular in Korea / Japan.
Quizlet Q-Chat — paid; quizlet-integrated AI tutor.
Photomath / Symbolab Solver — paid + free; step-by-step math (LLM-powered now in 2026).
Wolfram Alpha + Claude / GPT — combine for STEM-grade reasoning.
Socratic by Google — free; mobile camera-to-explainer; less-prominent in 2026.

Teacher-facing AI assistants

★ ★ MagicSchool AI — paid + free; the dominant teacher AI assistant in 2026; lesson plans, rubrics, IEP draft, parent-email translation, classroom-game generator. Free tier covers most individual-teacher use.
★ Brisk Teaching — paid + free; Chrome extension that adds AI tools to Google Docs / Slides / Classroom; popular for inline rewrite / level-adapt / quiz-generate.
Curipod — paid + free; AI-generated interactive lessons / slides.
Diffit — paid + free; reading-level-adapt any text.
Eduaide.AI — paid + free; teacher resource generator.
Quizizz AI — paid + free; generate quizzes from a topic / PDF.
Mizou, SchoolAI, TeachShare, Class Companion — alternatives.
PowerNotes / Twee / Education Copilot — alternatives.

General LLM tools (often used as tutors)

★ Claude (Anthropic) — paid + free; popular as a tutor due to longer context + careful hedging.
★ ChatGPT — paid + free; the brand-name; OpenAI's "GPT for Education" for districts.
Gemini (Google) — paid + free; bundled with Gemini for Google Workspace for Education.
Copilot (Microsoft) — paid + free; bundled with Microsoft 365 Education.
Perplexity — paid + free; citation-flavoured; useful as a research helper.

Self-host (privacy / data-sovereignty)

See Self-hosted AI / LLM — Ollama + Open WebUI + open weights (Llama, Qwen, Mistral, Gemma) gets you a private school-LMS-attached tutor for the cost of a GPU.
LangChain / LlamaIndex + your district's content as RAG — see document parsing / RAG.
Open Educational Resources + open-weights LLM + Khanmigo-shaped prompt = a credible privacy-respecting district-internal tutor.

Adaptive / mastery (older AI category)

DreamBox, i-Ready, ALEKS, Knewton Alta, Carnegie Learning MATHia — paid; older "intelligent tutoring" / adaptive systems; predate the LLM wave but increasingly bolt on LLMs.

Honest take (2026)

Hallucinations are real — verify factual claims. Pair AI tutoring with curated content.
Younger students need scaffolding — straight-to-LLM defeats learning; Khanmigo's "doesn't give answers" approach is the right pattern.
Data privacy / training — read the EULA; many tools train on student data unless you opt out. COPPA and FERPA still apply. Districts need a DPA.
Equity — students with strong prompting skills get more from these tools; curriculum needs to teach the prompting itself.
Teacher time savings are real — MagicSchool / Brisk routinely save 5-10 hrs/wk on lesson prep + parent communication.

Pick this if…

K-8 student tutor with safeguards: Khanmigo.
Teacher productivity, free first: MagicSchool + Brisk.
Language conversation practice: Duolingo Max or Speak.
District-deployed, data-sovereign: self-host Ollama + Open WebUI + your own RAG.
Already have a Workspace / 365 site licence: Gemini for Education or Copilot.
Research / citation-tracking: Perplexity or Claude with web search.