Abstract Schools are increasingly grappling with challenges posed by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies, exemplified by the omnipresence of chatbots and their repercussions for pedagogical practices. This paper explores the case of how ChatGPT unfolds in, and affects, students’ writing practices and what the implications are thereof. We conceptualise ChatGPT as a ‘thinking infrastructure’ that structures and affects attention, decision-making, and cognition. By researching two schools in Belgium and Germany, we discuss how students engage with ChatGPT when performing school tasks. Our analysis shows how ChatGPT affects students’ writing practices by generating habits , valuating knowledge , cultivating affinity , and prompting thought . This, we argue, illuminates shifts in what it means to be educated today. We suggest the need to further articulate the new conditions of learning emerging through GenAI technologies and propose the need for a pedagogy that fosters infrastructure literacy.