A lecturer replaced himself with an AI avatar. His students couldn’t tell the difference

When university lecturer Luke Rowe decided to replace his recorded online lecture with an AI-generated avatar of himself, he expected his students would notice immediately that something amiss.

Instead, most were unable to initially differentiate between the real recording and the avatar. And once they could, students said they preferred the AI version of Rowe to the real thing.

“I was eating humble pie, and I was sitting there going, ‘Why is that?’” the senior education researcher at Australian Catholic University said.

One reason was that the avatar had a smoother and deeper sounding voice than Rowe. There were other telltale signs that should have alerted students, but seemingly didn’t, at least not at first – hand gestures that misaligned with speech, and the eyes of the avatar being difficult to read, for example.

Before conducting the experiment with his class, which is itself focused on AI ethics, Rowe had to get approval from the university.

Though ACU said it has no plans to replace academics with AI avatars, the experiment was part of its aim to teach students about responsibly using tools they will find in the workforce.

Rowe said the avatar had plenty of benefits for personalising learning. Students can change the language it speaks in or speed up the cadence. From a teaching perspective, the AI avatar allows the researcher to edit and update lectures, keeping lessons up to date.

“Hopefully, my human judgment will exceed that of AI,” he said of delivering lectures himself.

“But if we’re talking of efficiency, no way; AI can absolutely do this more efficiently than I can.”

In recent years, a number of Australian universities have moved away from traditional hour-long lectures towards online mini-lectures.

However, educators are yet to understand the effect avatars will have on how students learn online and the trust they have in teachers, Rowe said.

“From a human perspective, students can smell a lack of authenticity a mile away,” he said. “And when you’re authentic, and you genuinely care about them, and you ask them how they’re going and care about how much they learn, they will enjoy it and engage more.”

Early research also suggests people need to master knowledge and skills with their own brain before they start to complement their thinking with AI.

“The pyramid is built from the bottom up,” Rowe said.

University of Melbourne deputy vice chancellor of education Gregor Kennedy said the university was taking a balanced approach to introducing AI.

“I don’t think we’re moving towards an AI study buddy situation at the moment, but we’re certainly trialling tools that help students navigate administrative aspects of the university,” he said. “From my point of view, we’ve got to think about not undermining the teacher and student relationship that is fundamental to a good education.”

The university currently requires that half of all assessments in many subjects are secure from students offloading their thinking to AI. This can involve oral assessments, where they explain the thinking behind their essays, and timed exams.

“Students do the essay, and then you’re in a dialogue with students about what they’ve prepared,” Kennedy said. “It’s useful for the student; it’s useful for the assessor.”

La Trobe University, which labels itself an “AI-first university”, introduced an AI-powered robot last month to help trainee and early career teachers simulate difficult conversations with parents.

“We don’t have a central initiative to roll out avatars, but we’ll be following with a very keen interest any innovation in this space,” La Trobe vice chancellor Theo Farrell said.

While he can foresee a day when AI assists teachers with marking student work, Farrell stresses decisions such as these will ultimately be up to academic boards to advise on and approve.

“When I started teaching decades ago, because of the volume of essays that we had to read, we produced a template … and then there would be a scale of one to 10, and you would tick where it was and provide two lines of comments at the bottom,” Farrell said.

“Now you can imagine quite precise feedback that’s given by an AI agent, where at the end of the day, you’ve read the essay and pushed ideas to the AI tool, but you don’t have to write the actual feedback. It produces the feedback, you review it, and you calibrate it based on your review.”

He said educators needed to be supported to trial how AI tools could be used to enhance learning.

“It could be possible that in five to 10 years’ time we will see a very different learning experience. We’re still stuck in the industrial age in the way that we teach, but AI offers us that hyper-personalised experience.”

The sector’s regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency, has standards that all higher-education providers must comply with regardless of whether courses are delivered by academics or supported by AI tools.

“Students should understand how technology is being used in their learning and should not be misled about the nature of the teaching,” a spokesperson for the agency said.

“Used appropriately, technology can support innovation, accessibility and new approaches to teaching and learning. Technologies such as avatars in teaching can have legitimate educational applications.

“What is important is that the use of technology is intentional, purposeful, educationally sound and appropriately transparent.”

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Jackson Graham is an education reporter at The Age. He was previously an explainer reporter.Connect via email.

Nicole Precel is an education reporter at The Age. She was previously an audio video producer. She is also a documentary maker. Get in touch at nicole.precel@theage.com.auConnect via X, Facebook or email.