China temporarily suspended major AI chatbots, including those from Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, during the Gaokao exam due to concerns about potential cheating.
China has once again demonstrated its seriousness about balancing education and technology. Due to the Gaokao exam (Gaokao Exam 2025), which began on June 7th, several major Chinese AI companies temporarily shut down their chatbots and photo-recognition capabilities. This measure aims to prevent unfair practices such as cheating during the examination.
Which AI tools were suspended?
According to a Bloomberg report, the suspension affected major AI tools from prominent Chinese tech companies. These include:
- Alibaba's chatbot Qwen
- Tencent's Yuanbao
- ByteDance's Doubao
- Moonshot AI's Kimi
These chatbots were either temporarily taken offline or had features that could be used for cheating, such as photo-recognition, answering student inquiries, or solving live questions, disabled.
Why was this decision taken?
The Gaokao is considered China's most difficult and prestigious entrance examination, with over 13.4 million students participating. It serves as the sole pathway for admission to colleges and universities in China. Students undergo rigorous testing in science, mathematics, history, language, and other subjects. Therefore, preventing any form of cheating in this examination is a top priority for the administration.
The Chinese administration feared that students could use generative AI tools to generate answers or take photos of questions to get solutions from chatbots, thereby compromising the fairness of the exam. Keeping this in mind, the administration ordered the temporary deactivation of these tools.
Technology becoming a challenge
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