AI chatbot 'frozen' to prevent cheating in college admissions

China's most popular AI chatbots, like Alibaba's Qwen, have temporarily disabled functions like image recognition to prevent cheating in the 2025 Gaokao.

Tencent's Yuanbao and Moonshot's Kimi apps suspended image recognition services during the 2025 Gaokao. When asked for an explanation, the chatbots replied: "To ensure the fairness of the college entrance exams, this function cannot be used during the exam period."

Chinese students take the gaokao in Beijing on June 7. Photo: Xinhua

This year, 13.35 million students in China are taking the college entrance exam. As of June 9, Alibaba’s Qwen and ByteDance’s Doubao were still providing image recognition services, according to Bloomberg . However, when asked about exam photos, Qwen said the service was temporarily suspended during exam hours from June 7 to 10, while Doubao said the photo upload function did not comply with the rules.

The Gaokao is held in China every June and is attended by millions of students. As the most important national exam, the Gaokao is also tightly controlled to prevent cheating. However, the rapid development of AI technology poses new challenges for schools and administrators.

Last month, the Ministryof Education released a set of regulations, stressing that while schools should start nurturing AI talent early, students should not use AI-generated content as answers in homework and tests.

AI Instruction and Artificial Intelligence Instruction in Primary, Middle and High Schools are important measures to standardize the promotion of AI education at all levels. Accordingly, the primary stage focuses on cultivating basic interests and awareness, the middle stage strengthens basic engineering principles and applications, the high school stage focuses on systematic thinking and innovative practice, and cultivates the “4 in 1” of knowledge, skills, thinking and values.

An education official said that AI will be introduced into subjects such as information technology, science , festivals, exhibitions, and projects in a natural and coherent way. Through many practical activities, students can demonstrate their creative achievements and exchange learning experiences, which will help them learn and grow.

The guidelines also aim to prevent students from becoming too dependent on artificial AI, ensure that technology is used effectively and appropriately in supporting teaching, promote students' personalized learning, and intelligent education management. Under the multi-stakeholder cooperation of " government - school - enterprise - family - community", it not only unleashes the innovative potential of technology-based education, but also builds a solid value foundation for education.

To prevent the ability to think independently from being weakened by over-reliance on generative AI, the guidelines also establish a systematic prevention mechanism. On the one hand, students are strictly prohibited from directly copying AI-generated content for homework or tests, and the abuse of AI in creative tasks is restricted. On the other hand, teachers' guidance responsibilities should be strengthened, and teachers should be required to actively carry out critical thinking training in teaching practice, and guide students to analyze the logical flaws of AI-generated texts.

(According to Bloomberg, Xinhua)

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/chatbot-ai-bi-dong-bang-de-ngan-chan-gian-lan-trong-tuyen-sinh-dai-hoc-2409721.html