Chinese AI companies have temporarily suspended some of their chatbot features to prevent students from cheating during national university exams. Bloomberg Report. Popular AI apps, including Alibaba's Qwen and Bytedance's Doubao, stopped their photo recognition capabilities from answering questions about test papers, while Tencent's Yuanbao and Moonshot's Kimi completely stopped their photo recognition services during exam time.
With improved availability of chatbots, it's easier than ever for students around the world to cheate through education. US schools are trying to address the issue by reintroducing paper testing. Wall Street Journal In May, it reported that blue book sales have been booming at universities across the country over the past two years.
The rigorous multi-day “Gaokao” exam has seated over 13.3 million Chinese students between June 7th and 10th, each fighting to secure one of the limited locations of universities across the country. Disabling AI chatbots serves as an additional safety net to prevent fraud during exam season, as students are already banned from using devices such as mobile phones and laptops during several hours of testing.
When asked to explain the suspension, Bloomberg Yuanbao and Kimi Chatbots report that they responded that the feature was disabled “to ensure fairness in university entrance exams.” Similarly, the DeepSeek AI tool, which went viral earlier this year, is blocking services at certain times “to ensure fairness in university entrance exams.” Guardian.
We were unable to find public announcements from the AI companies mentioned above. Guardian News about the closure reportedly being driven by students on Chinese social media platform Weibo. Gaokao's entrance exams are the only way to secure university placement in China, thus incites fierce competition and encourages concerns that students may seek to improve opportunities with AI tools.
