iTutor can now draw for you. Ask for a diagram of what you're studying, or a picture of anything else, and the tutor draws it right in the chat. When something in a diagram can change, a slider lets you change it and watch what happens.
Some things are hard to follow in words alone: how a ray of light bends, which way blood goes round the heart, what happens to a graph when one number changes. A good figure shows it at once. So we built figures into the chat: labelled diagrams and pictures, drawn for your question.
Ask for a picture, get a labelled figure
Ask the way you normally would: "draw the parts of a cell", "show me a diagram of a series circuit", "can you sketch how light bends in water?". The tutor answers in words as usual, and a figure for your question appears under the answer.
Every label points at the part it names. When something in the figure can change, a slider under it changes that one thing: the angle of the light, the value in a formula, the stage of a process, how deep you are inside the Earth. As you move it, the drawing changes, and the line above the slider states the numbers at that point, such as i = 45°, r = 32°. When nothing needs to move, like the parts of a plant cell or a food web, you get a still figure with no slider.
Figures work for many kinds of topics:
- Science diagrams: a cell, the heart, the eye, DNA, circuits, lenses, a pendulum, forces on a ramp.
- Graphs and charts: a parabola as you change one number, supply and demand, a pie chart, a box plot.
- Maths: fractions on a number line, a circle theorem, a probability tree, a Venn diagram.
- Maps and timelines: the Nile and the cities along it, the edges of the Earth's plates, the years of a war.
- Outlines: flowcharts of a procedure, cause and effect (fishbone) diagrams, the plot of a story.
The labels are in the language you study in. Ask in Arabic and the labels are in Arabic, and the figure reads correctly on a right to left page.
Under every figure are three buttons. Enlarge opens the figure full size. Download saves it as a picture for your notes. And Something's wrong tells us if a label or a part looks off, so we can look at that figure.
Pictures too
Not everything you want to see is a diagram. Ask for a cat on a windowsill for your story, the pyramids of Giza, a friendly robot or a birthday cake with eight candles, and the tutor draws a picture: a real illustration in colour, not boxes and labels. A picture has nothing to move, so it comes as a still figure.
What it won't draw
iTutor draws what a school would show: the body and its organs, the reproductive system included as a labelled diagram, history with its soldiers, castles and battles, maps, animals and everyday scenes. Every request is checked before anything is drawn. It won't draw anyone being hurt or threatened, a weapon aimed at a person, gore, nudity, self-harm, drugs being taken, a hate symbol shown for its own sake, or a real person drawn to mock or shame them. The tutor still answers your question in words, and nothing is counted.
Or tap Draw it
Sometimes a figure would help even though you didn't ask for one. Then the tutor answers as usual and adds a Draw it button under the answer. Nothing is drawn, and nothing is counted, unless you tap it.
Keep chatting while it draws
A figure takes a few minutes. It is drawn on our side, not in your browser, so you don't have to wait: ask your next question, open another subject, or close the tab. While it draws, the card shows how long it has been going.
When it's ready, a notice appears in the bottom corner with a Show button that takes you straight to it. If you had left, you'll see the notice the next time you open iTutor, and the figure is waiting under its answer. Up to two figures can be drawn at the same time.
Checked before you see it
Every figure is checked before it is shown, and a figure with a slider is checked with the slider at the start, the middle and the end. The first check looks at the layout: labels that point at nothing, words that sit on top of each other, lines that cross words and words that spill out of their box.
Then a teacher check writes down what must be true for your question, such as which way the blood flows or how many electrons each shell holds, and compares the drawing with that list, the numbers above the slider included. For diagrams, one more check looks only at how the parts meet: a wire that joins two parts it shouldn't, or a valve in the wrong place.
If a figure fails, it is drawn again, up to three times. If none of them passes, you get a short note instead of a figure you can't trust, and it doesn't count towards your figures. We'd rather show no figure than a wrong one.
Ask about the figure
The tutor knows what it drew: the labels, what the slider changes and the numbers it starts at. So you can ask about it in your next message, such as "why does the ray bend towards the normal?" or "what's the part on the left?", and the answer is about the figure in front of you.
How many figures each plan has
A figure counts only when one is ready and shown to you. Tries that fail the checks don't count, and neither does a Draw it button you never tap. Your figures start again on the 1st of every month.
| Plan | Figures a month |
|---|---|
| Free | 3 |
| Basic | 30 |
| Premium | 100 |
| Pro | 200 |
| Enterprise | 2,000 |
| Schools and companies | 100 per learner |
When you have two or fewer left, the figure card says how many. And when they're used up, nothing stops working: the tutor still answers in full, in words, sometimes with a simple flowchart, and tells you the date your figures come back.
Figures are drawn in text chat. In a voice conversation, the tutor talks the idea through instead.
Try it
Open any subject and ask for a picture of what you're studying, or of anything else, or tap Draw it when the tutor offers one. If your figure has a slider, move it and see what changes.