In Malaysia, there is an issue where high school and university students are using ChatGPT to write papers that should have been written by themselves. In the United States, high schools are back to using OCR answer sheets in exams to prevent cheating. The development of AI is so rapid that it is difficult for educational institutions to prevent cheating. One country where this issue has not passed is China, with Bloomberg reporting that artificial intelligence (AI) companies have suspended their Chatbot services in honor of the gaokao.
Gaokao is an annual four-day university entrance exam with more than 13 million students taking it this year. To prevent cheating, Bytedance, Tencent, DeepSeek and Ali Baba have shut down their services. Users in China have complained that the chabot service used for photo editing purposes is also not operating. DeepSeek, for example, has given a notice of temporary suspension of services to ensure fairness throughout the exam period.
This does not mean that AI is not used at all during the gaokao. Schools use AI to detect students who try to cheat by looking at the answer sheets of the next table or trying to whisper to each other. Videos recorded during exams will be analyzed by AI, with offenders being punished accordingly after the exams are over.
There have been previous reports of AI being used by schools to see if students are paying attention in class and catch those who are sleeping. Footage of students who are not paying attention will be sent directly to parents or guardians as punishment.