In brief: The problem of students using AI to cheat on their exams has become a major headache for schools around the world. But China has come up with a solution that could prove effective: AI companies are suspending some of their chatbots’ features during exam seasons.
Makers of some of China’s most popular AI apps, including Alibaba’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, have stopped the tools’ picture-recognition features from responding whenever they are used to identify and answer questions related to tests, reports Bloomberg. Others, including Tencent’s Yuanbao and Moonshot’s Kimi, have completely disabled their photo-recognition services during the current exam period.
A Chinese user posted a photo of an exam question posed to Doubao. The chatbot responded with, “During the college entrance examination, according to relevant requirements, the question answering service will be suspended.” Insisting that the question isn’t related to an exam brings the same response.
DeepSeek, the darling of the Chinese AI industry that sent markets into a temporary tailspin earlier this year, told users that its features were not available during specific hours to ensure fairness in the college entrance examination.
China’s three-day gaokao exams began on Saturday. The annual national undergraduate admission test is required for admission to higher education institutions in the country. Over 13.3 million students are taking part, and it is strictly controlled to prevent cheating.
Students taking the nine-hour exam, which is split across three days, aren’t allowed to use laptops or phones, though China obviously thinks there’s still a risk of them accessing AI tools.
While students are banned from using AI in the exams, the technology is being utilized by several regions to monitor for “abnormal behaviors” during the tests, including whispers and repeated glances at another person’s paper that might not be noticed by the human proctors.
In the US, using tools such as ChatGPT to cheat in school exams has been endemic since last August. There have also been instances where parents have sued schools who punished their children for using AI in exams. There was even the case of a student who demand an $8,000 refund of their tuition fees after discovering that one of her professors used ChatGPT to generate lecture notes and presentation slides.
Some US schools are trying to combat AI cheating by reintroducing paper tests, but the government is more focused on integrating AI into education rather than stopping it being used to cheat.
Image credit: Giulia Squillace
