Google Gemini’s Test-Prep Is Latest Nail in Coffin for SAT Tutors

Students have long studied for the SATs with endless flashcards and prep books that doubled as doorstops. There’s also personal tutors and prep classes for those who can afford it.

Now, they can use AI.

Google debuted free, on-demand practice tests for the SAT through Google Gemini on Wednesday. The content of these tests is vetted by the Princeton Review — one of the publishers of those study tombs — while feedback is given by Google’s AI.

While the practice tests are only available for the SAT, Google teased that more exams were coming in the future.

“For anything you don’t understand, you can ask Gemini to explain the correct answer,” wrote Google DeepMind’s Carol Walport. “By helping you identify specific knowledge gaps, Gemini empowers you to turn those insights into action.”

It’s another blow to the tutoring industry, a small but lucrative space coaching young adults toward academic success. College prep is especially high-earning. One SAT tutor told Business Insider last year that he charged $135 to $155 an hour; an essay tutor said he made $200,000 while only working nine months.

It’s not the first time technology has eaten into the largely human tutoring industry. PDFs of practice tests have long run rampant around the internet. Tools like Quizlet and Chegg have made it easier for students to share study materials.

The threat of AI is wholly new, though, and the industry is still figuring out how to respond.

In 2023, Chegg’s stock crashed 49% in a single day after the company said students were using ChatGPT to study. Two years later, the company laid off 45% of its workforce — or 388 employees — while citing the “new realities of AI.”

Sal Khan, the founder of the online tutoring program Khan Academy, said in 2023 that AI could be the “biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” Khan aims to give every student an “artificially intelligent, but amazing, personal tutor.”

The AI companies also know that education is a space where they can grow. Anthropic launched Claude for Education in April, which included student programs and a “learning mode.” Elon Musk’s xAI has Grokipedia, a knowledge base similar to Wikipedia.

OpenAI launched its Study Mode in July, when Business Insider declared education a “new battlefield in the AI war.”

In his famous 2023 letter about the future of AI, Bill Gates gave significant space to his predictions for education. Teachers would need to adapt, he wrote, but they wouldn’t go away entirely.

“Even once the technology is perfected, learning will still depend on great relationships between students and teachers,” Gates wrote. “It will enhance — but never replace — the work that students and teachers do together in the classroom.”

But for students and parents evaluating their options ahead of SAT season, Gemini’s new test-prep offerings are the latest competition for human tutors.