June 11, 2025
Beijing – The gray industry offering “artificial intelligence-generated content” or AIGC rate reduction services has surged on Chinese online shopping platforms such as Taobao, raising concerns during graduation season.
These services, claiming to reduce AI-generated content that can be detected in academic papers, have been featured by hundreds of people advertised with slogans such as “manual fixes” and “24-hour online consultation.”
Most products lack clear pricing labels, and vendors often insist on moving conversations and payments to WeChat, avoiding traceable transactions. Founded over five years ahead of the widespread popularity of AGC tools, many stores display a number of identical products despite their business qualifications, including education.
One store with over 50 sales per day of AIGC rate reduction services charged 32 yuan ($4.45) for a 5,000-word paper. It boasted an internal database that allows AI to accurately match and exchange vocabulary.
Luo Xueming, a senior expert at the Institute of Modern Urban Industrial Technology, Guangdong, described the AIGC rate reduction service as “a simulated demand generated by the products of technology renovations and management indicators.”
He explained that the introduction of AIGC detection by universities to regulate the use of AI in their papers created this new demand. The service, along with the creation of ghostwriting and PowerPoint, forms a complete gray industrial chain, he said.
The “manual changes” provided by these services are essentially AI reuse, Luo notes, including accessing academic databases, comparing content, and adjusting sentences and vocabulary based on algorithms. Such a customized application usually costs around 20,000 yuan.
“The surveillance and management of this industry is indeed challenging as it involves multiple authorities, including education, market oversight, internet security and science and technology,” Luo said, adding that the service could grow “secretly and quickly” due to the lack of clear academic ethical boundaries regarding AI polishing, plagiarism and adaptation.
The practice of switching between communication platforms and payment modes is designed to prevent consumers from tracking transactions and collecting evidence of future consumer rights protection claims.
Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction and say it is difficult to get a refund. One woman reportedly paid 3,000 yuan to reduce the AIGC rate from 70% to 20% needed only to show 60%. According to news outlet Xinhuanghe, she had to correct the paper herself because she was unable to contact the service provider. Complaints include incompetent language, fragmented sentences, and inconsistent logic of modified text.
Chu Zhaohui, a researcher at China's National Academy of Education and Sciences, said the rapidly evolving nature of AI has made it difficult to establish a comprehensive legal framework. He suggested that a practical approach is to enhance student academic ethics education.
Li Juan, an associate professor at Central South University's Law School, estimated that 60-80% of students use this year's AI tools to varying degrees. This ranges from purifying text to creating a large amount of content.
She observed improvements in language quality in this year's paper, but also pointed to cases of “AI hallucinations,” in which AI produced persuasive but false statistics or legal cases. Nevertheless, she emphasized the importance of not letting sub-per practice cover positive progress.
Regarding the AIGC rate reduction, she said she was unaware of the service. She added that the university does not consider AIGC rates to be an essential standard for approving papers. Rather, it serves as a reference for supervisors who will ultimately make final decisions.
Her typical approach meticulously reviews overlapping labeled areas and offers suggestions for corrections one by one, whether they are flagged due to inadequate arguments or errors in judgment caused by immature detection techniques.
She said the responsibility of the supervisor will help reduce the survival space for such industries.
