"Person is a person, a tool is a tool" - ChatGPT’s Role in Student Help-Seeking Behavior and Peer Support

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, are reshaping higher education. In research, a lot of attention has been given to concerns like academic integrity and how to integrate AI into learning and teaching. However, little is known about how these tools impact student help-seeking patterns and peer interactions. This short paper investigates GenAI tools, help-seeking preferences and the importance of peer support among first-year software engineering students (n=94). Our responses show that 50% of the students use GenAI tools as the primary source of help-seeking, and 43% report that using ChatGPT reduces their need to interact with peers. However, students generally recognize the importance of social interaction and peer support for their learning. We use these duality findings to extend previous recommendations for integrating generative AI in education by providing new recommendations on how educators can support help-seeking and peer support in the age of GenAI.