When I asked the AI writing assistant Smodin to generate an article profiling itself, the resulting text began, "Smodin can be used to generate marketing content, including website content and product descriptions."
That's not entirely accurate. Smodin has created a writing tool, but the company says it's mostly used by students.
This theme of text generation is well-aligned with the current trend of AI-powered content. But Los Angeles-based Smodin launched in 2017, which is five years before AI startup OpenAI took the world by storm with its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT. Since then, the market has been flooded with alternatives, but they're mostly focused on a broader consumer audience, which means content far beyond homework assignments.
Created as an AI writing tool to help students, Smodin has since added features like a plagiarism checker, which verifies that text is unique, as well as an AI content detector, which tells you whether the text is likely to be identified as AI-generated, and a homework helper, which provides answers for questions in subjects like geography, math, physics, biology and history.
The latter tools were created in response to feedback that students were using Smodin -- which the company call a supplemental writing and research tool -- to cheat, said Shawn Sheikh, co-founder of Adly, a portfolio company that acquires startups. (Adly announced its acquisition of Smodin on July 17.)
Sheikh said many people use Smodin as a jumping-off point or to generate talking points they can argue for or against in their essays.
"We've also seen a lot of teachers use this to provide writing samples to students," Sheikh added.
A free version offers limited access to the tool. Yearly plans, which let you use the platform more frequently, run from $12 to $63 a month.
It does seem like Smodin would be a popular tool among students with fast-approaching deadlines.
When I was in college years ago, I took a class on James Joyce's massive and challenging Ulysses. It was the only book we read that term, and I'm not sure I would have gotten through it any other way. (Thanks, Professor North!)
Out of curiosity, I asked Smodin to generate an essay on the primary themes and symbols in Ulysses. To start, you select the content type and number of paragraphs, and -- if you're a subscriber -- you can input more requests, like writing quality, keywords and sources.
The 515-word essay I received as a free user began, "James Joyce's Ulysses is a complex and richly layered novel that delves deep into the exploration of identity, self-discovery and societal influences. Through the intricate weaving of themes and symbols, Joyce crafts a narrative that challenges traditional storytelling conventions and offers readers a profound insight into the human experience."
With one chapter written like a series of newspaper articles and another like a script in a play -- and many, many other formats -- Joyce indeed experimented with style.
But I would argue that the Smodin-generated essay repeats the phrase "identity and self-discovery" too often, and the only real symbol it touches on is water.
Perhaps the company is right and students use Smodin as a tool to get unstuck. I hope no one would try to turn in the Ulysses essay as is -- I ran it through Smodin's AI content detector, which accurately flagged it as having a 100% probability of being generated by AI.
Sheikh didn't disclose the overall number of users, beyond saying it's "in the millions" and Smodin gains 10,000 to 12,000 new users per day. It's available in more than 100 languages.
Smodin uses ChatGPT, as well as its own models, which it trains with help from a team of writers.
"Because we have so many users and so much content being generated, our learning models are really, really good," Sheikh said.
Next, Sheikh said, the company hopes to simplify the existing tools and better communicate that students can use the platform to "solve pretty much any homework problem."
Smodin is also interested in developing plagiarism checkers for enterprise customers, along with a resume builder as a next step for students who use the platform in college.
Smodin was self-funded prior to its acquisition.
