ChatGPT Could Be Weakening Your Brainpower

Study shows the long-term impact on memory.

Author

Aaron Wu
June 23, 2025

Hey there! It’s Aaron.

In 2025, we all wanted AI to make us faster, smarter, and a little less caffeinated.

But what if it’s actually making us mentally lazier?

Source: MIT Study: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. Participant during the session, while wearing Enobio headset, AttentivU headset, using BioSignal recorder software.

That’s the unsettling finding from a recent MIT study—and it’s not just clickbait. Researchers strapped EEG headsets on students and watched what happened when they wrote essays with and without ChatGPT.

Let’s just say… the brainwaves told a story we didn’t want to hear.

📌TL;DR

  • Cognitive debt is real – Using ChatGPT to write from scratch weakens your creative muscle. Draft first, then let AI refine.

  • Search goes audio – Google now reads answers out loud, turning your queries into podcast-style summaries.

  • Canva gets cinematic – Generate short AI-powered videos with Veo 3, right inside your design workflow.

  • More AI news…

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

CATCH OF THE DAY

Convenience vs. Cognitive Strength

MIT ran a 4-month study with 54 students split into three groups:

  1. Wrote essays with ChatGPT.

  2. Used Google for research.

  3. Went full analog (no tools).

The ChatGPT group had the lowest brain activity—and the worst memory retention. In contrast, the “brain-only” group lit up the EEGs like a fireworks show, showing strong neural signals tied to critical thinking and creativity.

Even more troubling: most ChatGPT users didn’t realize how much it dulled their mental engagement.

It’s the Google Maps effect, but for your brain.
When GPS became a thing, people’s spatial memory started declining. Similarly, when ChatGPT writes for you, you process less, recall less, and think less.

As one researcher put it:

“You don’t remember the content—you remember where to find it.”

Sound familiar?

Creators, This Hits Closer Than You Think

If you’ve ever prompted ChatGPT to “generate 10 hooks for my Reels,” pasted them into a doc, and moved on without changing a word—you might be running on autopilot.

That’s cognitive debt in action.

You’re skipping the messy thinking part: the trial, the gut feel, the “eh this one’s not bad but what if I twist it?” moment. And over time, if AI keeps doing the creative heavy lifting, your own instincts get… quieter.

It’s also how prompt rot sneaks in—when everything you write starts sounding the same, like an AI that’s been reading your drafts too often. When your ideas are always AI-first, your voice takes a back seat.

The study isn’t saying “never use AI.” In fact, those who wrote first and refined later with ChatGPT showed the strongest brain activity and the best results.

That’s your edge.
Write like it’s all you. Then let AI clean it up like an overpaid intern.

Think of it like strength training:
Writing from scratch? That’s your core workout.
Using ChatGPT to polish, edit, or rephrase? That’s your spotter.

Just don’t skip the lift and expect to get stronger.

🧠 Thought Prompts for Creators and Educators

  • Are you starting with your own ideas first—or jumping straight to the prompt box?

  • Are you building creative muscle—or outsourcing every rep?

  • Are your learners practicing real thinking—or just collecting better shortcuts?

The goal of AI isn’t to think for you. It’s to help you think better.

The Final Byte

AI won’t kill your creativity overnight—but it can dull it if you let it do all the lifting.
Just like with GPS, the more you rely on it, the harder it becomes to find your own way.

So next time you write, start with your own brain.
Use AI like a coach, not a crutch.

Because the best ideas still come from the original source: you.

YOU.

See you in the next one,

BYTE-SIZED BUZZ

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s making waves in the AI world this week.

🎧 Google Adds Podcast-Style Search Summaries
Google Search is now rolling out Audio Overviews—spoken summaries for select queries using Gemini AI. Think: ask a question, get a mini podcast in return.

The Big Deal: Hands-free learning just became a default feature. For creators, it’s another sign that audio-first content is creeping into every corner of daily life.

🎬 Canva Now Lets You Prompt AI Videos
Canva has integrated Google’s Veo 3 model, allowing users to generate slick 8-second video clips directly inside the platform with audio and motion.

The Big Deal: Video creation is getting democratized. Even solo creators can now produce scroll-stopping clips—without touching Premiere Pro.

📉 McKinsey Says AI ROI Is Mostly MIA
New data shows 80% of companies use AI, but most aren’t seeing real returns. Why? They’re layering it onto old processes instead of redesigning workflows with agents in mind.

The Big Deal: If you're just bolting AI onto your to-do list, you’re missing the point. Systems need a rethink—not a chatbot duct-taped to a broken process.

🎥 Midjourney’s First Video Tool Now Supports Prompted Motion
Midjourney’s new V1 model turns still images into short animations—up to 20 seconds long—using either automatic motion or text prompts that guide how the scene moves.

The Big Deal: The style stays true to Midjourney’s visual roots, but now creators can steer motion like a director. No sound yet, but it’s a bold first step into AI video.

📚 AI Scrapers Are Breaking Public Archives
Libraries, museums, and digital archives are under pressure as AI bots ignore robots.txt and flood servers with scraping requests—sometimes knocking sites offline.

The Big Deal: Creators often depend on these open resources. If scraping isn’t reined in, we risk losing access to the very material that fuels research and creativity.

WEEKLY CREATOR LOADOUT 🐾

  • Seedance 1.0 – Generate cinematic, short-form video content using ByteDance’s leaderboard-topping AI video model—perfect for TikTok, Reels, and trailers.

  • Google Search Live – Get hands-free, AI-generated podcast-style answers to your queries—ideal for multitasking creators and educators on the go.

  • Castmagic – Repurpose podcast episodes into transcripts, summaries, show notes, and social media content with minimal effort.

  • Yatterplus – Use AI-powered personal assistance in WhatsApp or Telegram to draft content, summarize PDFs, and manage creative tasks on the go.

  • Thumbly – Design high-converting YouTube thumbnails with AI that optimizes for engagement, not just aesthetics.

  • V1 by Midjourney – Turn still images into short, animated video clips using text prompts or motion synthesis—no video skills required.

  • Adobe Firefly (Mobile) – Create, edit, and remix AI-powered designs directly from your phone with the Firefly app for iOS and Android.

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