Student crafts elaborate AI scheme to pass university exam, gets arrested

A Turkish student has been arrested for creating an elaborate contraption linked to artificial intelligence (AI) software used to help them cheat during a university entrance exam.

As reported by Reuters, the student was observed behaving in a suspicious manner during the exam and was later detained by the Turkish authorities alongside another co-conspirator who allegedly helped the student. The student was then formally arrested and sent to jail to await trial.

A video captured by police in the province of Isparta, where the entrance exam took place, shows the contraption used to aid academic misconduct.

The video shows the various components used by the perpetrator, including a tiny camera masquerading as a shirt button and a router, which connects to the internet, in the sole of the student's shoe.

The camera would scan the questions and send images to an undisclosed AI model, which would use the router to connect to the internet. The AI would then answer the questions and relay them directly to the cheating student via an earpiece.

Authorities also located a mobile phone that could supposedly relay information to the other person, which led law enforcement to believe that the student did not act alone.

The video taken by law enforcement shows a police officer explaining the lengths this individual went to in order to cheat on this entrance exam.

He says, “During the TYT, which is the first sitting of the university entrance exam organized in Isparta, as a result of the search we conducted on a person whose behavior and actions were suspicious, a contraption for cheating in the sole of their shoe was revealed. The person was determined to have been cheating during the exam.”

“The items found on the person were a device called a router, which provides an internet connection and uses the internet connection to send the question to artificial intelligence and relays the solution to the answer from artificial intelligence through an earphone.”

He continues by saying that a “mobile phone which can relay the spoken sounds to the other side which is automatically spoken to the earphone and a person can hear the conversation on the other side.”

The police officers identified the camera button used to scan the questions in the entrance exam and used it as intended. It worked. The answer was relayed to the officer via the earpiece, spoken in a foreign language.