How the development of ChatGPT slowly killed Chegg. I watched it happen live as an employee

A firsthand account from a former top-ranking Physics Expert at Chegg reveals the direct, devastating impact of generative AI on the online tutoring and homework-help industry. The employee witnessed question volume begin to dry up following the public release of OpenAI's ChatGPT 3.5 in late 2022. The decline accelerated dramatically after the more capable GPT-4 model became mainstream in 2023, cutting the expert's available work by nearly half. This shortage cascaded through the platform, affecting both answerers and quality assurance reviewers, signaling the end of the human-expert business model that companies like Chegg and Coursehero were built upon.

The financial and operational outcome was catastrophic. Chegg recently announced it is shutting down its core Q&A and doubt-clearing service, effectively ending the company's primary reason for existence. The stock price tells the story of the disruption: from a high of $108 in 2021, it has collapsed to just $0.45 in 2026. The former expert was also deboarded from Bartleby, another platform in the same space, confirming this was an industry-wide extinction event. This case study provides a clear, measurable example of AI's power to rapidly dismantle established business models and the employment landscapes they supported, moving from gradual erosion to total obsolescence in under three years.