Students Are Using Smart Glasses to Cheat on Their Exams

Students in China are reportedly renting AI smart glasses for up to $12 per day to cheat on their exams.

According to a report from Rest of the World, China’s AI glasses market is expanding, supported by government subsidies and tech firms such as Xiaomi and Alibaba, which are integrating large language models into wearable devices. Now, students in China are reportedly using smart glasses from companies like Meta and Rokid, which can provide answers to quiz questions, to cheat on exams. This capability has created a small rental market for the glasses in the country.

One anonymous student tells Rest of the World that she occasionally uses smart glasses to cheat on exams and also rents them to other students. Another businessman tells that the news outlet that he rents out Rokid and Alibaba smart glasses. Many of his customers are “students who need the glasses for exams.” The devices are advertised on Chinese social media as being able to answer English and math questions, with rental prices reportedly between $6 and $12 per day depending on the model.

Rest of the World notes that AI smart glasses are banned during both college entrance exams and civil service exams in China. However, as many models are difficult to detect, students report that they often go unnoticed.

In the United States, similar concerns have led institutions to take action. The College Board has banned smart glasses for SAT testing. The U.S. Air Force also recently banned personnel from wearing smart glasses with “photo, video, or artificial intelligence capabilities” while in uniform. Cruise liner company Royal Caribbean also recently prohibited the glasses from certain parts of its ships. Despite these rules, enforcement remains challenging because many devices have minimal visible features, such as a small display or a blinking red light.

PetaPixel recently reported on an app called Nearby Glasses, which can detect if someone nearby is wearing a pair of Meta Ray-Bans or another brand of smart glasses. The app uses Bluetooth to look for tiny amounts of data called “advertising frames” that the devices emit as part of their normal operation.

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