If you're a student on TikTok, you've probably been bombarded with ads for Medley AI. Promoted by countless study influencers, this app promises to revolutionise your revision with personalised plans, exam board alignment, and an advanced AI marking system.
But the reality might be very different from the marketing hype.
A recent video by the YouTube channel 1st Class Maths took a deep dive into the app, revealing a series of concerning flaws. From wildly inaccurate marking to testing students on content well beyond their required exam specifications, there's a lot students need to know.
This post breaks down the serious issues with Medley AI, sourced directly from the detailed findings in the video, "What you're not being told..."
1. The Broken Marking System: Welcome to "Medley Roulette"
Medley AI's core promise is intelligent marking. However, the video's investigation showed this system is deeply flawed and inconsistent.
Inaccuracy and Guesswork
The AI was tested on GCSE maths questions and was found to:
Mark incorrect answers as correct.
Give zero marks for completely correct answers.
Accept blatant "rubbish" to award full marks on extended questions.
The Wild Inconsistency
To test the system further, the same English essay (written by ChatGPT) was submitted multiple times (a game the creator dubbed "Medley Roulette"). The exact same text yielded scores ranging from 27 up to 35 out of 35.
How can a student trust an app to evaluate their knowledge when it scores the same piece of work differently every time?
Marking Irrelevance
Perhaps the most absurd finding was the AI's willingness to give high scores to irrelevant text. The essay from one question was entered into a question on a completely different topic and still scored well (31 out of 40).
In an even more shocking test, the lyrics to Boney M's "Rasputin" scored 6 out of 40, and the entire text of The Queen's Christmas Message from 2000 scored a perfect 40 out of 40 on an English essay prompt. This strongly suggests the AI isn't assessing content but rather volume, syntax, or complexity in a completely superficial way.
2. Testing A Levels on a GCSE Platform
Medley heavily promotes its alignment with specific exam board specifications (AQA, OCR, Edexcel), claiming to be "quality checked by experienced teachers". This claim was contradicted by numerous errors:
Non-Assessed Topics: For AQA, the app teaches topics like rationalising two term denominators and completing the square when , which the official AQA guidance states will not be assessed.
The Wrong Course: For OCR and Edexcel, the app includes numerous topics that are officially listed as not assessed.
A Level Content in GCSE: Worryingly, the app includes content that belongs in the A Level syllabus, such as the trapezium rule, logarithms, and even advanced probability. Even more shockingly, several A Level topics like position vectors and linear interpolation are found in the GCSE Foundation tier section.
Wrong Equation Sheets: Selecting a course often provides the equation sheet for a completely different and more advanced course (for example, AQA Higher gives the Further Maths GCSE sheet).
If students rely on this material, they risk wasting precious revision time on topics they don't need, while potentially missing crucial syllabus points.
3. The Underwhelming AI Tutor
The AI tutor, designed to identify weaknesses and create personalised plans, was found to be inflexible and limited.
The tutor crumbled when asked general questions about the student's weaknesses or next topics to work on, only ever circling back to the question currently on screen.
When compared to ChatGPT on the same problem, the general AI (ChatGPT) not only provided a better, clearer explanation but also offered to generate new, similar questions. When asked to do the same, the Medley AI admitted it couldn't.
The app's AI chat, therefore, offers less utility and flexibility than widely available free tools.
4. Influencer Hype and Questionable Marketing
If the quality is questionable, why is Medley AI everywhere? The answer, as the video explores, is simple: money.
Big Payouts: The creator was offered £600 for three short videos, and other creators have reportedly been paid £300 per video. For a student, this is a huge incentive.
Lack of Expertise: The criteria for promotion is not educational background, but simply "how well you can yap in front of a camera". Teachers are notably absent from the promotional push.
Empty Insights Pages: Many student influencers promoting the app show a completely empty insights page, strongly suggesting they have not actively used the platform as part of their own revision.
Misleading Statistics: Medley uses contradictory and unverifiable statistics in its ads. For example, the claim of "74% improved by at least one grade" appears alongside "74% jumped by two plus grades" and then "only 40% gain two plus grades" on their own website.
Trustpilot Violation: Medley sent an email offering a free month to the "first 200 people who leave a great review on Trustpilot". This is a clear violation of Trustpilot's terms and conditions against offering incentives for positive reviews, which casts doubt on the integrity of their 4.5 star rating.
The Final Verdict
The idea of an adaptive AI study platform is excellent, but its execution must be flawless. The video's investigation, which included finding garbled text in the textbooks and poor quality mock exams, suggests that Medley AI is not ready for students to rely on.
The questions are often not suitable for your exam board.
The AI marking is highly inaccurate and inconsistent.
The personalised tutor is inflexible and limited.
The conclusion is clear: You don't need to pay for something that performs worse than free alternatives. For maths revision, the video recommends resources like Maths Genie and ChatGPT, which the creator endorses as producing quality, reliable materials.
Exams are not "pay to win." Before purchasing any study app based on an influencer recommendation, always remember to conduct your own research.