China restricts the use of AI chatbots during exam season to crack down on cheating

Exam

As millions of students sit for the annual national college entrance examination, known as the Gaokao in China, multiple local AI companies have temporarily banned key artificial intelligence (AI) features to prevent students from cheating. This nationwide suspension, which began on Monday, is expected to last until the completion of the exams later this week and aims to stop the potential misuse of generative AI tools to generate answers.

Chinese tech firms temporarily suspend AI tools: Key details

According to a report by Bloomberg, Popular Chinese AI apps, including Alibaba’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao, have stopped image recognition features from responding to questions about test papers. Meanwhile, Tencent’s Yuanbao and Moonshot’s Kimi have suspended photo-recognition services entirely during this exam season in China, where more than 13.4 million students compete for a limited number of university seats.

DeepSeek, a popular generative AI tool from China, has also blocked its services during specific hours to ensure fairness in college entrance exams. Moreover, other than these AI suspensions, The Guardian reports that several provinces in the country have implemented AI monitoring systems to detect ‘abnormal behaviors’ like whispering or suspicious glances between students during exams.

Last Month, Chinese authorities also announced stricter entry checks at exam points with biometric identification, enhanced screening for digital devices, and radio signal blockers, to curb the use of advanced tools to cheat during exam time, according to the state media. The Chinese government has a long history of implementing such strict measures to prevent cheating. However, with the rise of sophisticated AI tools, the government has a new and complex challenge.