"Could AI Have Breached Professional Exam Halls Too?"... Three Helpers for One Student, AI Glasses with 83% Accuracy [Experiment Notes]

German Researchers Test AI on 720 SAT Questions
Gemini Scores 82.78%; GPT-4o, 75.69%

AI Photographs Questions and Solves Them in Real Time... Already Commercialized
Exam Paper Leaks Also Reported at Universities Overseas

Controversy has erupted over allegations that the top scorer on a recent tax accountant exam may have cheated using AI smart glasses. The candidate's unusually high score of 397.5 out of 400 on the first-stage exam, along with reports that they did not major in tax or accounting, has fueled suspicions.

The controversy has also drawn attention to how well AI glasses can actually solve problems. Has the technology advanced to the point where a camera mounted on a pair of glasses can photograph an exam paper and AI can find the correct answers? In an experiment by overseas researchers, AI answered a substantial number of questions correctly even when images were distorted to resemble those captured from actual exam papers.

AI Answered 720 Exam Questions... Accuracy Rate of 82.78%

Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany presented a study at the 2025 International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU) analyzing the potential for cheating on exams using smart glasses.

The researchers used 720 previously released questions from the U.S. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), comprising 396 reading questions and 324 math questions. Rather than having someone take an exam wearing actual smart glasses, they artificially recreated the image distortions that could occur when an exam paper is photographed with a glasses-mounted camera.

Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro answered 82.78% of all the questions correctly. Its accuracy rate was 87.96% in math and 78.54% in reading. OpenAI's GPT-4o scored 75.69% overall, with 74.69% in math and 76.52% in reading.

However, these results do not represent the rate at which cheating would succeed in an actual exam hall.

Rokid AI glasses. Wenhui Bao, China

Another experiment has demonstrated the capabilities of AI glasses. In March 2026, a research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said that AI glasses scored 92.5 out of 100 in just 30 minutes when used to take a university-level major subject exam designed for third-year students.

The team built a system that sent images of exam papers, captured by the AI glasses' camera, to an AI model and displayed the analyzed answers on the glasses' screen. The AI glasses were equipped with GPT-5.2.

The experiment involved an exam in a course called "Principles of Computer Networks." The AI glasses earned full marks on multiple-choice questions and an essay question that took up one page, and scored most of the points on questions spanning multiple pages. On some questions, they gave incorrect final answers but showed their reasoning, and they also arrived at correct answers using knowledge not covered in class.

The AI glasses user scored 92.5 points, far exceeding the average score of 72 among all test-takers. This placed the user among the top five of more than 100 students enrolled in the course. The highest score among other test-takers was 97.5, but it took that person about three hours to finish the exam; the AI glasses user completed it in about one-sixth of that time.

An exam paper from the University of Sydney in Australia was used in promotional materials by sellers on Chinese video platform Douyin who sell cheating devices, Australian public broadcaster SBS reported.

Leaked Exam Questions and Equipment Rentals... Cheating Becomes an Industry

AI glasses work by sending information captured by their camera to a connected smartphone or cloud-based AI, then providing the results through audio or a display. Their functions vary by product, but because they look much like ordinary glasses, proctors may find it difficult to distinguish them with the naked eye.

AI-assisted cheating is also becoming a problem at exam venues overseas. In September 2026, Australian public broadcaster SBS reported on a leak of exam questions at the University of Sydney. The university confirmed that exam materials from a total of 10 subjects had been leaked using cameras during the exam period in June 2026.

The leaked exam questions were used as promotional material by vendors selling cheating devices on China's video platform Douyin. When SBS reporters contacted five vendors, they found that the vendors were selling or renting out button-sized miniature cameras bundled with wireless earpieces about the size of a grain of rice. Equipment rentals cost 3,000-5,000 yuan (about 600,000-1 million won), while purchases cost 8,000-11,000 yuan (about 1.6-2.2 million won).

Some vendors also advertised a service in which experts outside the exam venue solve questions in real time and relay the answers. One vendor said that three experts would be assigned to each student: two would solve the questions, while the third would relay the answers through an earpiece. However, this was the vendors' description of the service, and it has not been confirmed whether it worked as advertised.

Hard to Distinguish from Ordinary Glasses... Safeguards Needed

Recently, the test-preparation scene has seen a series of unusual cases, including perfect scores on the Law School Admission Test (LEET) and more candidates passing both stages of certain professional exams in the same year. These cases were initially attributed to improved candidate performance as professional careers grew more popular, but advances in AI technology have sparked a new controversy.

Some candidates have even responded with self-deprecating comments such as, "Am I the only one who didn't use AI?" Since exams are trusted as a fair standard for objectively assessing ability, it seems urgent to put safeguards in place to prevent AI-assisted cheating from undermining that trust.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.