To prevent students from being tempted to use AI to cheat during these national exams, this country has taken a radical decision: suspending AI services during the exam period.
Starting this Friday, June 13, the 2025 baccalaureate exams will officially begin with French, followed by philosophy. While waiting for this fateful date, millions of students are taking advantage of the last few days to revise. Examiners and invigilators are obviously preparing to spy on the slightest attempt at cheating and to mark students' papers.
While the classic cheat sheets in the pencil case or earphones hidden in the ears are still popular, more and more candidates are not hesitating to ask ChatGPT for a helping hand during exams. More specifically, of the 560 cases of cheating recorded in 2024, nearly 5% were linked to the use of artificial intelligence. And unfortunately, this figure is only expected to increase with the democratization of chatbots and AI services.
In the United States, some universities have taken radical measures to prevent students from using ChatGPT and its ilk during exams. The idea is simple: return to the traditional notebook and pen combo. As a result, sales of the famous blue notebooks have doubled over the past three years in Uncle Sam's country.
This country completely suspends AI during end-of-year exams
In China, more than 13.3 million students have already applied to take the Gaokao. Considered one of the most demanding exams in the world, the Gaokao is the name given to the National Entrance Examination for Higher Education. It is the culmination of Chinese education, and over four days, candidates are questioned on all the knowledge they have acquired (mathematics, science, modern languages, etc.). For Chinese students, the stakes are high: the better their results, the greater their chance of getting into a prestigious university.
Inevitably, faced with such pressure, some might be tempted to cheat by exploiting AI... But that was without taking into account the radicalism of the Chinese authorities. Indeed, as reported by our colleagues at the Guardian, Beijing has simply ordered the country's largest AI companies to suspend/limit certain features of their chatbots for the duration of the exam.
Chinese AI shut down
For example, on Doubao, an intelligent assistant belonging to ByteDance (editor's note: TikTok's parent company), it is impossible to ask any questions about exam papers: “During the university entrance exam, in accordance with current requirements, the question-answering service will be suspended,” we can see on a screenshot of AI shared by a student on Weibo.
The same observation applies to DeepSeek, a very popular AI tool in the Middle Kingdom. Thus, the entire service is suspended during certain hours “to ensure fairness during the university entrance exam”.The image recognition features of Yuanbao (Tencent), Qwen (Alibaba) and Kimi (Moonshot) have also been disabled until the end of the exam. Do you think we should consider a similar procedure in France for the Baccalaureate exam? Let us know in the comments!
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