IB students can use ChatGPT in their essays. That was the decision the International Baccalaureate made when AI chatbots first exploded into mainstream use, and it remains one of the most forward-thinking policy positions any major examination board has taken on artificial intelligence in education.
While school districts in the United States rushed to ban ChatGPT and other AI tools, and while most examination boards in the UK stayed quiet or cautious, the IB took a different position. It did not ban AI. It treated it the way it treats any other source of information, as something students are expected to use critically, reference properly, and never pass off as their own original work.
That distinction matters more than most people realise, and it is worth understanding properly.
What the IB Policy on ChatGPT Actually Says
The IB’s position is clear. Students may use ChatGPT and other AI tools in their work, provided they treat outputs from the platform the same way they would treat any other quoted or referenced source. The content must be credited in the body of the text and properly referenced in the bibliography.
What is not permitted is submitting AI-generated work as the student’s own. The IB made this explicit: to submit AI-generated content without attribution is an act of academic misconduct and will have consequences. But using AI as a source, referencing it correctly, and building analysis around it, that is not the same thing as cheating, and the IB is not treating it as such.
Matt Glanville, the IB’s Head of Assessment Principles and Practice, put it plainly: the clear line between using ChatGPT and providing original work is exactly the same as the line that already exists around using ideas taken from other people or the internet. The principle is not new. The tool is.
The IB also framed this as a long-term position rather than a temporary response to a new technology. Its official statement described AI as something that “will become part of our everyday lives — like spell checkers, translation software and calculators.” The conclusion drawn from that was not to ban it but to adapt educational programmes and assessment practices so that students are prepared to use it ethically and effectively.
Why This Approach Makes Sense
The IB’s response to ChatGPT is consistent with something that runs through the entire programme: the belief that students should develop the skills to evaluate and use tools critically rather than being shielded from them.
Every IB student learns, as part of their education, how to assess the reliability of sources, cross-check information, attribute ideas properly, and build original arguments from a range of inputs. The Extended Essay, the Internal Assessments, the Theory of Knowledge essays — all of them require students to demonstrate their own thinking, not just their ability to locate and reproduce information.
ChatGPT does not change that requirement. What it changes is the landscape of available tools. A student who uses ChatGPT to generate a paragraph and submits it as their own has failed the same test as a student who copies from Wikipedia without attribution. A student who uses ChatGPT to explore perspectives on a topic, cites it properly, and then builds their own critical analysis around it has done something closer to what research actually looks like.
The IB understood that distinction early. Most other bodies did not.
What School Leaders Said
The response from education leaders in the UK was largely supportive of the IB’s approach, though with measured caution.
Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, acknowledged that ChatGPT creates genuine challenges for any form of assessment that relies on coursework where students have internet access. But he described the IB’s approach — allowing the platform as a source with correct attribution — as sensible and consistent with how other sources of information are already used.
His caution was practical rather than principled. ChatGPT itself acknowledges that some of the information it generates may not be correct, which means students need to understand the importance of cross-checking and verifying information, as they would with any source. The risk is not that students use AI. The risk is that students trust it uncritically.
Sarah Hannafin, senior policy adviser at the school leaders’ union NAHT, was more straightforwardly positive. She described the IB as taking a very sensible approach and framed the broader issue as one of helping children and young people evaluate the benefits and risks of technology and understand how to use it appropriately and effectively. That, she argued, is what education is for.
The contrast with the Ofqual position in England was notable. Dr Jo Saxton, then chief regulator, said at a school leaders’ conference that innovations like ChatGPT reinforce the importance of examined arrangements and that coursework done at home or in school holidays should probably be moved to invigilated conditions. Her concern was about knowing whose work it is. The IB’s answer to that concern is not to eliminate the tool but to require students to be transparent about how they use it.
What This Means for IB Students Right Now
For students currently in the IB Diploma Programme or MYP, the practical implications are straightforward.
You can use ChatGPT and other AI tools as part of your research and writing process. You cannot submit AI-generated content as your own work. Every time you use an AI tool in a piece of assessed work, you need to acknowledge it — in the body of the text and in your bibliography — the same way you would acknowledge any other source.
The IB’s academic integrity policy applies. Schools have their own guidance on AI use, and students should check what their school’s specific traffic-light or classification system says. Some schools, like DSB International in Mumbai, have implemented explicit frameworks for AI use in the classroom that map directly onto IB assessment requirements.
The Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge are the assessments where this matters most, because they require the highest degree of independent analysis and original argumentation. Using AI to explore ideas is fine. Using AI to generate the argument itself and submitting it as your own is academic misconduct.
The line is the same one that has always existed. It is just more important to understand it clearly now.
The Bigger Picture: What the IB Got Right
The IB’s decision not to ban ChatGPT was not a permissive shrug in the direction of academic dishonesty. It was a recognition that the technology exists, that students will encounter it throughout their lives and careers, and that an education system worth anything has to prepare them to use it well rather than pretend it does not exist.
That is consistent with the IB’s broader philosophy. The learner profile asks students to be principled — to act with integrity and honesty. It asks them to be thinkers — to exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively. It asks them to be reflective — to thoughtfully consider the world and their own ideas and experience.
None of those qualities are developed by banning tools. They are developed by teaching students to use tools with judgement, transparency and rigour. That is what the IB’s ChatGPT policy asks students to do. And three years on from the original decision, it remains the right call.