Major Chinese tech companies, including ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, DeepSeek, and Moonshot AI, temporarily disabled key features of their AI chatbots during the 2025 Gaokao, China’s national college entrance exams, to prevent cheating. The unprecedented move affected over 13.3 million students taking the highly competitive tests from June 7 to 10, underscoring the growing challenge AI poses to academic integrity.
The Gaokao, a rigorous multi-day exam determining university admissions, is a cornerstone of China’s education system. To ensure fairness, AI tools like ByteDance’s Doubao, Alibaba’s Qwen, Tencent’s Yuanbao, DeepSeek, and Moonshot’s Kimi suspended photo recognition and test-related question-answering functions during exam hours. Students attempting to upload test papers or seek answers were met with messages such as, “To ensure fairness in the college entrance examination, this function is not available,” or “The image content is not compliant.” Some services, like Kimi, went offline entirely during testing periods.
The coordinated effort, reported widely on Chinese social media platform Weibo, aimed to safeguard the exam’s integrity amid concerns that AI could give unfair advantages. Doubao, for instance, blocked image uploads with responses wishing candidates success, while Yuanbao fully disabled photo recognition. Authorities bolstered these measures with AI-powered surveillance, including facial recognition, drones, and cameras, to detect suspicious behavior like whispering or glancing at others’ papers.
The suspensions reflect the immense societal weight of the Gaokao, often a make-or-break moment for students, particularly from rural or low-income backgrounds. While no official government mandate was confirmed, the Ministry of Education’s prior guidelines banning AI-generated answers in tests likely spurred the tech firms’ actions.
This blackout highlights a global dilemma: traditional education systems are struggling to adapt as AI tools render conventional testing methods vulnerable. As generative AI becomes ubiquitous, China’s approach may set a precedent for other nations grappling with similar challenges.
