Teachers’ Day in India, celebrated on September 5, usually revolves around the people who teach us in classrooms. This year, social media had a rather different faculty to honour – ChatGPT, Gemini, Google, YouTube and other digital platforms that have become part of how young people learn.
One video that caught attention shows a person performing an aarti, a Hindu ritual of devotion involving a lit lamp, in front of a row of laptops, each screen displaying a different AI or digital-platform logo. The laptops became the objects of the tribute.
The video was posted by Chartered Commerce (@CCPTNA), which framed the gesture as a humorous tribute to the digital tools students increasingly rely on.
“When YouTube, ChatGPT & Gemini become your teachers!” the post read. “This Teachers’ Day, we gave our modern learning companions a little respect – complete with aarti! Technology helps us learn, but nothing replaces a teacher who guides, motivates & inspires.”
A second video takes the joke in a slightly different direction.
Posted by Instagram creator Vasudeva Himank (@vasudevahimank), it features paper posters carrying AI and platform logos taped to a wall and draped in garlands. People then approach the posters as if they were visiting teachers, offering them chocolates.
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The video was later shared by another account, Prof Cheems, on X/Twitter, giving it another round of visibility.
Another video, from the education page StudyNLearn, shows students approaching laptops with “Happy Teachers’ Day” notes before joining their hands in a namaste.
The caption lists ChatGPT, Google, YouTube, Claude, Gemini and Meta AI among the “teachers” that have become part of students’ everyday learning.
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The visual gag is simple but familiar: the tools that students turn to for explanations, information, and answers are being thanked like the people they might otherwise thank on September 5.
Several other posts ran with the same idea, suggesting the joke had become a wider online theme rather than a one-off.
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Read more: How An AI Tool, ChatGPT, Made Teachers Their Enemies?
“Happy Teachers’ Day, ChatGPT”
The comments show why the joke resonated. Some users simply accepted the premise. On X/Twitter, one user called them “social media teachers”, and another wrote, “Very good teachers, they taught us so many things.”
Instagram users had their own additions to the unofficial faculty: one called ChatGPT a “Whole World Detailed Teacher”, another described it as their “Best teacher”, while someone else asked why Chrome, the “OG biological teacher”, had been left out. “ChatGPT deserves all these chocolates,” read another.
YouTube got its share of gratitude too, with users joking that it had taught them things their school never did.
Not everyone was willing to swap a classroom for a chatbot. “What about those teachers who taught you from nursery till now when there were no smartphones bro,” one commenter asked.
Another was more measured: “Partially correct. They too play a role in shaping our lives. Google helps us find information. However, we should always verify the information and rely only on TRUSTWORTHY and RELIABLE SOURCES.”
ChatGPT wasn’t the only AI given the teacher tag. Users named Gemini, Grok, Copilot and Claude, while older internet study staples such as Wikipedia, Quora and Brainly also turned up.
Reddit had its own version of the celebration. In r/TeenIndia, one user wrote, “Happy Teacher’s Day to the real teachers of Gen Z IYKYK.”
Another posted, “JAHAN BHI DIKHUN PADHNE KO BOLDENA” – roughly, “wherever I go, it tells me to study” — before adding, “Yeah, Claude, for the notes, how could I forget you?”
In a thread titled “ChatGPT / YouTube Teacher Meme”, one user wrote, “ChatGPT is the one true teacher which saved me from all the canon events in college.”
Another kept it short: “Happy Teachers’ Day to chat gpt + yt.”
One Reddit user went further and posted a Teachers’ Day letter written to Claude, thanking the AI for explaining, guiding, and patiently answering even their “silly questions”.
Pointing to Claude’s Haiku, Sonnet and Opus models, the writer joked that it wasn’t just a teacher but a “whole faculty”.
The joke may not be that far-fetched
The “AI teacher” gag reflects how students are already learning. A 2025 study by the Centre for Policy Research and Governance (CPRG) found that nearly half of the students surveyed across Delhi’s higher-education institutions use AI tools for academic work.
Of those, 23% said they use AI daily. The most common uses were research (84%), writing (76%), and, notably, understanding complex subjects (68%).
That last figure is what makes the joke land. Students aren’t only using AI to get work done; many are using it to break down difficult topics and make sense of things they don’t understand.
In that sense, these tools may already be functioning as unofficial, on-demand tutors, even if calling them “teachers” remains more meme than reality.
But can AI really be a teacher?
OpenAI had its own Teachers’ Day message. Its film “Teachers Know More Than You Think | Happy Teacher’s Day” turns the familiar anxiety around homework into a running joke: students try to pass off polished, AI-assisted work as their own, and their teachers respond, every time, with one knowing line: “I know.”
The video ends with a simple reminder: “Teachers will always know. Ask ChatGPT to help you think, not think for you.”
That’s where the joke meets reality. AI can explain a concept at 2 am, answer the same question five times, and try a different angle when the first one doesn’t land.
But a teacher knows the student behind the answer: whether they actually understood it, where they’re struggling, and when they need to be pushed to think for themselves.
So ChatGPT, Gemini and YouTube haven’t taken the teacher’s seat. They’ve become the unofficial teachers students turn to between classrooms, while the real ones remain the people teaching them how to learn.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: The Statesman, The Economic Times, Impact
Find the blogger: @diptisadh
This post is tagged under: Indian students, AI teachers, Teachers’ Day 2026, Teachers’ Day, ChatGPT, Gemini, YouTube, Claude, Grok, AI in education, artificial intelligence, viral videos, social media trend, Gen Z, Indian students and AI, AI teachers trend, Teachers’ Day viral video
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