Does cheaters getting a high mark have a direct negative impact on other students? (E.g. grading on a curve.) In that case, you should probably switch to a meth

Does cheaters getting a high mark have a direct negative impact on other students? (E.g. grading on a curve.) In that case, you should probably switch to a method that makes everyone's mark depend only on their own performance. Other than that, students who don't understand the material well being able to outperform others who do may seem unfair, but in the end your course probably exists to teach students programming fundamentals that are expected as prerequisites in other courses, and the exercises serve to prepare students for the more difficult problems they'll encounter in those other courses. If a student decides they don't need that practice and ends up stumped later when GPT can't help them anymore, that's their own bad decision to deal with. (On the other hand, if that never happens maybe the Python course wasn't all that necessary for them to begin with.) So I recommend optimizing mostly for the students who do want to learn something; put enough effort into anti-cheating measures to keep honest people honest, but don't worry too much about cheaters beyond that.