China temporarily disables AI tools during year-end exams to curb cheating.
Rolling Up the Chinese Education System: Gaokao Proving Ground
The Chinese educational landscape reaches its climax this Tuesday, June 10, as approximately 13 million students wrap up their secondary school years. Over several days, they've faced the gaokao—their culminating exam that decides their university destiny.
As these young minds tackle academic challenges, major Chinese tech titans like Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) have shelved popular AI-driven tools temporarily, as per reports from Bloomberg, Business Insider, and The Guardian. This move aims to ward off cheating and deter fraudulent software usage aiding students to excel academically.
Among the temporarily halted applications named in entries floating across Chinese and Western social media outlets are ChatGPT-like chatbots and image recognition technologies. The latter feature, which enables users to upload photos for AI-powered problem-solving, has garnered significant attention.
Some of the services reported to have been put on ice in China include:
- Qwen, an Alibaba-developed conversational AI running on its namesake language model;
- DeepSeek AI, engineered by a start-up that sent shockwaves through the sector early in 2025;
- Doubao, a similar chatbot hatched by ByteDance;
- Yuanbao, an AI app conceived by Tencent;
- Kimi, an AI chatbot incubated by Moonshot.
For those curious, you might want to peruse our subscriber-exclusive article Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT's Impact on School Cheating.
AI at the Heart of the Action
These digital conversationalists and AI interfaces have been put on hold during exam hours, even for students not participating. Chinese users have been greeted with a message stating that their request couldn't be fulfilled "to safeguard the integrity of the university entrance examinations."
The Verge reports that no company has verified or divulged specifics about these temporary blocks. It remains uncertain whether tech giants self-initiated these restrictions or yielded to Chinese authorities' requests.
Beyond this, students are forbidden to keep their devices (consisting of smartphones) during the exam, further intensifying the conditions for Chinese pupils.
The Chinese authorities have also utilized AI to oversee students during the exam. Their employed technologies have primarily served to sniff out whispers or cheating-related gestures (like peeking at a neighbor's papers or answering questions too swiftly) through video surveillance, combined with software designed to detect suspicious behaviors.
Sources:1. Major Chinese Tech Companies Temporarily Disable AI-Powered Tools to Prevent Gaokao Exam Cheating, The Information, link2. AI and Cheating: How Companies Are Stopping Students from Using Bots to Pass the Gaokao, CNBC, link3. Gaokao Exam: How AI Technology Is Helping to Prevent Cheating in China, South China Morning Post, link
Business giants Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, amidst the gaokao exam period, have temporarily halted their artificial-intelligence-driven tools, such as ChatGPT-like chatbots and image recognition technologies, to prevent cheating among students. The Chinese authorities, in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the university entrance examinations, have also employed AI technology to oversee students during the exam, detecting suspicious behaviors through video surveillance and software designed to tackle cheating.
