The topic of artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded in 2025. This modern tool is in our search engines, our phones, and now, it’s encouraged in the classroom. With the rapid development of technology, it is not surprising that VIU’s administration decided to incorporate AI into our school.

VIU has been promoting its new AI-powered tool Studiosity. The online tool was first piloted under the authority of the VIU Library for one year in 2024. Academic and Career Preparation, Health Sciences, and Human Services departments were given access to use it first. The administration reported that the majority of students respond to it positively.

When searched on the web, Studiosity comes up under VIU Library’s online tutoring services, and is described as an additional resource to the Writing Centre and Peer-supported Learning. This new online tool provides round-the-clock access to assignment tips, feedback, and tutoring in English, math, and science.

Studiosity is divided into three categories of online AI-generated help: Writing Feedback+, which is exactly what it sounds like—“constructive AI-generated feedback” for a piece of writing, whether it is an essay, reflective writing, a cover letter, short stories, and more. Study Assist, which can help with study skills, citations, and academic research. Lastly, the Connect Live feature provides students with the ability to connect with a live tutor 24/7, but this specific category is limited to 10 sessions per semester.

Studiosity, without its full features and employed staff, costs $140,000 a year.

This was a really difficult piece to investigate, as most of VIU’s staff do not want to talk about Studiosity, which adds to the discomfort around what’s going on.

The platform provides intervention alerts to VIU, in case it identifies students who struggle academically, violate academic integrity policies, or mention self-harm, suicidal ideations, bullying, harassment, or struggles with the workload.

In those instances, VIU’s Conduct and Care team is alerted. The student is not informed that they have been referred to the team by Studiosity for an intervention.

VIU suggests that Studiosity is meant to work “alongside on-campus resources such as the Writing Centre,” and not to replace it.

One thing is certain: AI cannot substitute human-based learning and human interactions.

Humans are social creatures. Not only that, but when we go to the writing centre, we invest in and support unionized jobs in our local community. That way, we directly invest in our community.

Grap Scanlan, a cheeky Cockney turned Crofton local, swaps British pubs for curling stones. Once an IT professional, he is now an ambitious retiree.

Scanlan is a Creative Writing student, and he wrote a piece on AI and Studiosity for his journalism class. He sent a questionnaire about Studiosity to 76 students, and half of them replied. Contrary to the VIU administration’s report, every single student who got back to him said they were against AI use on campus in an academic setting (although the students asked were a slightly different demographic).

“You are not allowed to use [AI] but we have one,” Scanlan says. He says he was surprised when he used the tool for research purposes, because he thought that it would “Correct it [the writing], or update it.” But according to Scanlan’s experience with the program, Studiosity simply suggests where improvements can be made, but not how to make them in the same way that Grammarly does, for example.

Roberta Jenkins lives in Nanaimo with her daughter and their sweet cat. She is the coordinator of Pathways to Post-Secondary, and also the Chair of the Canadian University Foundation Year program at VIU.

Jenkins mentions that the Studiosity team approached VIU last year, when Jenkins was asking important questions such as “what does student support look like for a student who works full-time and has family obligations and is here for one or two hours of class a day and cannot make use of the other supports?”

Jenkins’ presentation from May 2025 showcases the data VIU leaned on when deciding whether to bring Studiosity to our university or not. It informs us that nearly 20 percent of the students who used Studiosity were referred to VIU services, and that 92 percent of Connect Live interactions were initiated for math and sciences, for which the support on campus is limited.

“[The pilot run] shows that as part of the feedback, they direct students back to our Writing Centre or back to counselling. It actually increases use of our in-house services, not decreases them,” Jenkins says.

She also notes that AI is actually thousands of individual tools that are created for different purposes, trained in different ways and have different audiences. “My daughter has diabetes and she wears an insulin pump,” Jenkins shares, a medical device which relies on AI technology. “Nobody can compare the AI in her insulin pump with a nurse, right? There’s still plenty of room for both of those to function,” she says.

The company assures students and universities that the tool was created for a very specific purpose, using very specific training. Unlike ChatGPT, it doesn’t just pull data from everywhere on the internet. There are trained professionals overseeing it every step of the way. However, the company uses “closed system AI,” which means the work produced by the students remains confidential and with them.

Craig Taylor is the Chair of the Creative Writing department at VIU and a successful author, journalist, and playwright. He always hopes for his students’ writing to find a place not only on the printed page, but also in film and on the stage.

“In my classes, the students reacted strongly, and they don’t really want [Studiosity]. In one faculty, it might be integral that you learn how to use it, and in another faculty, it might be integral that students use their minds and learn critical thinking,” Taylor says.

“There was one student who said that he wants to be the next Chekhov, and write with a pencil and a piece of paper and his own mind, which I love,” he says.

Taylor raises important questions, such as “how much are people in Studiosity paid? Do they have union rules?”

With a 3.4-star rating on Indeed, Studiosity gets a lot of tutors commenting about unfairly low pay, high workload, and no benefits, to name a couple of concerns.

Jay Ruzesky is a professor in the Creative Writing and English departments at VIU and has been teaching students how to write for more than three decades. Ruzesky loves experimental and documentary films and has an extensive literary career. He has also been a part of the writing centre for the last 36 years.

“My first thought is, do we need this?” Ruzesky says. “A lot of work we do in the Writing Centre is encouragement and nurturing. Students who have been out of school for a little while come back to this environment and they’re anxious and nervous, and they don’t think they can write,” he says.

“I don’t see Studiosity as a replacement for the writing centre. But sometimes, of course, we worry that it just comes down to funding and is it cheaper to pay, you know, the program, and administration might not factor in those kinds of the intangible things about learning,” Ruzesky says.

The University of British Columbia ran the pilot program through its Learning Technology Hub in the 2024-2025 winter term. UBC has tested Studiosity’s AI-powered tools and decided not to proceed with the program. I asked Matthew Ramsey, Director of University Affairs at UBC, why the university made this decision. “It’s too soon to comment [as] UBC [is] experimenting with and piloting a number of AI tools and applications to support faculty and students, and we will publish the outcome of our pilot on the LTIC site in due course,” Ramsey says.

Studiosity claims to be “ethical AI for learning,” teaching students to identify editorial issues and create their own solutions for their writing, 24/7. While AI can undoubtedly be used for good causes, there are also harms and disadvantages that come alongside the benefits.

VIU’s newly acquired platform uses Generative AI, which draws its content from the existing material, including but not limited to academic and scientific journals, posted blogs, or formerly produced AI data. There is an argument for plagiarism.

Studiosity’s general statement on privacy can be found online at , and is divided under a variety of types of Studiosity users. It is also stated in their privacy and cookies policy page that the type of personal information collected from students may include their name, contact info, year and field of study, and school name.

In his article “Friends don’t let friends Studiosity (without reading the fine print),” Brian Hotson raises an important question of universities turning to corporations, dismissing students’ privacy and selling students’ personal data.

It raises important topics of how modern capitalism is tied to extensive surveillance through new technology.

An interesting policy on social plug-in cookies is included in Studiosity’s Privacy and Cookies Policy: “social plug-in tracking cookies can be used to track both members and non-members of social networks for additional purposes, such as behavioural advertising, analytics and market research.” This means Studiosity contains third-party tracking tools which monitor user activity and may collect and process personal data.

Artificial intelligence emits heavy amounts of carbon dioxide and uses massive amounts of energy and water. A tool so damaging for the environment cannot be ethical, as different nations are disproportionately affected by the rapidly changing climate and shortages of natural resources.

AI is impacting and transforming clerical and heavy data-oriented jobs such as junior banking, warehouse, transportation, and IT staff. It is also affecting creative jobs such as visual artists, editors, and writers, but we might see a movement towards valuing human-produced products and services above the AI ones.

While there are many perks to being able to access help at any time of day and night and from any location, there are mixed emotions on campus about Studiosity. We are asked to adapt to evolving technology, but our human intelligence and creativity are at stake, as well as our environment. When using AI, every person must weigh both the benefits and the negative impacts. Remember that your brain is as powerful as any computer, and AI should be used as a tool, not as a solution.