Tomorrowland? Technical innovation and feedback on writing

Technological innovations have promised a great deal to language teachers over the years, raising expectations but without always delivering the benefits we hope for. The potential of automated writing evaluation systems and generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, however, might change this. Their ability to relieve teachers of hours of marking while providing instant local and global written corrective feedback across multiple drafts targeted to student needs and in greater quantities seems too good to ignore. In this short ‘viewpoint’ paper, I explore the main pros and cons of these developments and ask if generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools are just robotic marking machines or whether they actually help improve our feedback and the writing skills of our students.