BEIJING: Chinese schoolchildren are turning to artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT to slash their homework time, vaulting the country’s “Great Firewall” to write book reports and hone up on their language skills.

With its ability to produce A-grade essays, poems and programming code within seconds, ChatGPT has sparked a global gold rush in artificial intelligence tech.

But it has also prompted concern from teachers, worried over the possibilities for cheating and plagiarism.

In China, where the service is unavailable without a virtual private network (VPN), students said they had used it to write essays, solve science and maths problems, and generate computer code.

Eleven-year-old Esther Chen said ChatGPT had helped to halve the time she studies at home, while her sister Nicole uses it to learn English.

Esther, who attends a competitive school in the southern megacity of Shenzhen, said she used to spend four to five hours every day on homework.

“My mum would stay up late until I finished all my homework and we would fight constantly,” she said. “Now, ChatGPT helps me to do the research quickly.” Several students said they had bought foreign phone numbers online or used VPNs to bypass restrictions and access ChatGPT.

One retailer allows users to buy a US number for just 5.5 yuan (80 cents), while one registered in India costs less than one yuan (15 cents).

And for those unable to scale the firewall, AI Life on the ubiquitous WeChat app charges one yuan to ask ChatGPT a question, as do other services.

Chinese media last month reported major tech firms, including WeChat’s parent Tencent and rival Ant Group, had been ordered to cut access to ChatGPT on their platforms, and state media blasted it as a tool for spreading “foreign political propaganda”. But Esther’s mother, Wang Jingjing, said she wasn’t worried.

“We’ve used a VPN for years. The girls are encouraged to read widely from different sources,” she said, adding she was more worried about plagiarism and keeps a close eye on her daughter.

Esther insisted she does not get the chatbot to do the work for her, pointing to a recent assignment in which she needed to finish a book report on a novel, Hold up the Sky, by Liu Cixin, a globally renowned Chinese sci-fi writer.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2023