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ChatGPT is a widely used AI designed with a conversational format to respond to users' questions through dialogue. It uses a command prompt to generate answers by searching the internet with a single sentence. It serves as a virtual assistant in students’ learning process. It is easy to access yet easy to abuse because unfortunately some students use the tools as cheating tool, and, it can backfire for the user who doesn’t double-check the accuracy of information produced by the application. Other than that, the side effect of such powerful tools is how they could simplify tasks instantly and cause dependency on the tools. It can be assumed that it may lead the user to have difficulty creating a paragraph or even developing ideas. The research aims to determine whether or not the frequent use of ChatGPT influences the students’ ability in writing. The research employs a descriptive quantitative method focusing on the second-, fourth, and sixth-semester students of the English education department, STAIN Majene as the sample. Questionnaires and test are used to collect the data. The result reveals that around 44.4% of respondents use ChatGPT in every assignment they were tasked meanwhile, only 22% of respondents get good scores on writing test. A regression linear analysis was also conducted and surprisingly shows that sig.> alpha or 0.431 > 0.05. So, H0 is accepted or in conclusion, the frequent use of ChatGPT does not influence the students’ ability to develop ideas.

ChatGPT, writing ability, English Learning, developing ideas