During China's national unified university entrance examination, the "Gaokao," which began on June 7, 2026, inspections of examinees wearing glasses were strengthened nationwide to prevent cheating using AI-equipped smart glasses. Major AI companies such as Tencent are also expanding moves to restrict image-recognition and answer functions in their apps during the exam period.
June 7 · Gaokao 2026 · China
The AI Glasses Crackdown on China's "Life-Defining" Exam
With ~12.9 million candidates sitting the national college entrance exam, provinces have made extra inspections of eyeglass-wearers mandatory — while major AI chatbots voluntarily disabled image recognition during testing hours to stop cheating with camera-equipped smart glasses.
12.9M
candidates in 2026 — a second straight year of decline
$6–12
a day to rent AI smart glasses on the emerging black market
1,000+
people rented from one Shenzhen vendor in just four months
How the cheating device works
Near-identical to ordinary spectacles — making detection difficult.
📷 CAPTURE
Built-in camera photographs the question
→
🧠 ANALYZE
AI processes and solves it
→
👁 PROJECT
Answer shown on display inside the lens
Region-by-region response
Guangdong
Glasses removed, placed on desk; proctors inspect under video surveillance
Shanghai
Prescription-glasses wearers asked to cooperate with pre-entry checks
Inner Mongolia
Switch to ordinary prescription glasses — zero-tolerance policy
Hebei & Guizhou
Similar switch-over requests
Fujian
Smart glasses banned; staff trained to identify frames by shape
AI firms disabled features during exam hours
Restrictions enforced over windows like 8:00–11:30 & 1:00–6:30 .
Qwen
Image upload & Q&A disabled
Yuanbao
Image recognition halted
Kimi
Image recognition halted
Doubao
Exam answers restricted
DeepSeek
Exam answers restricted
Seen as responsible
AI companies voluntarily restricting features in response to government fairness requests is viewed as fulfilling a degree of social responsibility.
A "cat-and-mouse" fight
High concealability makes full prevention hard. If contact-lens-style devices spread, the very nature of paper exams could be called into question.
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