Chinese university examinations are notoriously difficult, and students are increasingly turning to AI-powered eyeglasses to increase their chances of admission, the country’s media reported on Friday, July 17.
On July 1, a student, whose surname was given as Lin, was caught cheating during an exam at the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou.
About 10 minutes into the exam, a member of the supervising staff noticed the lenses of Lin’s glasses briefly turning green and asked him to remove them. He subsequently admitted to wearing AI-powered glasses.
China News Weekly reported on Friday that Lin was sporting a pair of ‘Leqi Smart Glasses,’ a model released in September last year that integrates four major AI models: Deepseek, Tongyi Qianwen, Zhipu, and Doubao.
Among their many built-in features are photo-based question searching and problem solving, allowing would-be cheaters to search for answers without voice commands.
All Lin had to do was touch the frame of the glasses near his temple to take photos of the exam questions and wait for the glasses to provide the answers.
He needed to cover the LED on the frame that lit up whenever he took a photo, but what he didn’t take into account was that a green light could be seen through the lenses at certain angles.
As Lin’s story went viral online, other students took to social media to praise AI glasses, claiming that the green light could easily be concealed with a pair of cheap sunshade stickers.
A quick online search also reveals that the number of classified ads leasing AI-powered glasses to students for as little as 200 yuan has also increased.
Some vendors even provide complete tutorials teaching students how to switch the glasses to silent and low-brightness modes.
Similar cheating incidents have recently occurred in universities in Hubei, Henan, Beijing and other Chinese regions, with one professor claiming that supervisors are almost completely unprepared to deal with AI glasses.
Lin Che, a product manager specialising in smart glasses, warned that in the near future, AI-powered eyeglasses will be almost indistinguishable from conventional ones, making supervisors’ jobs even harder.
