When two years of academic work vanished with a single click

3 min read Original article ↗
  • CAREER COLUMN

After turning off ChatGPT’s ‘data consent’ option, Marcel Bucher lost the work behind grant applications, teaching materials and publication drafts. Here’s what happened next.

By

  1. Marcel Bucher

    1. Marcel Bucher is a professor of plant molecular physiology at the University of Cologne and member of the CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence, where his research focuses on plant-microbe interactions, arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis, and nutrient signalling.

Within a couple of years of ChatGPT coming out, I had come to rely on the artificial-intelligence tool, for my work as a professor of plant sciences at the University of Cologne in Germany. Having signed up for OpenAI’s subscription plan, ChatGPT Plus, I used it as an assistant every day — to write e-mails, draft course descriptions, structure grant applications, revise publications, prepare lectures, create exams and analyse student responses, and even as an interactive tool as part of my teaching.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-04064-7

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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