China Temporarily Freezes AI Chatbots To Prevent Exam Malpractice

Major Chinese tech companies have temporarily disabled their AI tools to curb cheating during the "gaokao", China's highly competitive national college entrance examination held from June 7 to 10. Popular AI platforms such as Alibaba’s Qwen, ByteDance’s Doubao, Tencent’s Yuanbao and Moonshot’s Kimi have reportedly either stopped responding to exam-related queries or disabled functions like image-based answer generation.

The move comes amid rising concerns that AI chatbots could be misused by students for unfair academic assistance. While there is no formal response from the companies, the restrictions were widely reported by university students who found themselves locked out of tools they commonly used for study and assignments.

This year's gaokao was attended by over 13.3 million students, competing for limited university placements. Known for its intensity and strict security, the exam already bans electronic devices. The AI feature freeze further reinforces efforts to ensure fairness and exam integrity. Emerging tools like DeepSeek, which gained popularity among students this year, also followed the suspension, citing the need to “ensure fairness in the college entrance examination, ”according to The Guardian.

In addition to these tech limitations, several regions have already announced their new use of AI-powered monitoring systems to detect any suspicious activities during exams, such as whispers and repeated glances between the students. Authorities emphasise that the measures are temporary and designed to uphold the credibility of one of the most important Chinese academic exams.