AI is reshaping childhood in China

The runaway success of Chinese artificial intelligence models such as DeepSeek and Qwen has spurred every industry, from health care to agriculture to education, to integrate AI. 

Adoption of AI models in education and tutoring has been especially fast, as the Chinese government pushes to accelerate the country’s technological progress against the U.S., and with anxious parents willing to try anything to help their children succeed.

Like university teacher Wu Ling, who while looking for an English tutor for her 12-year-old son in Jiangsu province, picked a $1,170 robot dog. 

The one-foot tall AlphaDog, which weighs about eight kilos (18 pounds) was developed by robotics startup Weilan and is powered by DeepSeek’s AI model. In addition to practicing English with Wu’s son, it chats with him about current events, dances to his guitar music, and, through its built-in camera, helps Wu monitor the home when she is away. It has become a part of the family, she told Rest of World.

“My son needs company, but we are a one-child family,” Wu said. “He asks the dog about all kinds of things — national news, weather, geography. Through AlphaDog, he is learning what the world is like.”

With the Chinese government’s push, AI in education has become a multibillion-dollar industry.

From robot toys to homework-grading systems, AI tools are flooding classrooms and households alike. They not only provide learning material but also companionship and emotional support, taking on an increasingly bigger role in the lives of children in China. In an August directive, the government ordered that the technology be integrated throughout children’s education to enable personalized teaching, raise learning quality, and narrow inequalities.

But educators and researchers remain skeptical, warning that AI’s benefits are overstated, and that such tools may cause harm by limiting children’s social interactions and weakening their learning skills. They may also widen inequalities, as rural children face long hours in front of screens while their urban peers spend time with qualified teachers, Jeremy Knox, an associate professor at the University of Oxford who has studied AI in Chinese education, told Rest of World.

“There is so much hype [around AI] at the moment,” he said. Many researchers are skeptical of the edtech industry’s promise that AI will lead to better education. “If young people are relying more and more on automated responses, they are losing the ability to do that thinking for themselves.”

AI is fast becoming part of children’s education and upbringing across the world. In the U.S., Alpha Schools use AI to teach children reading, math, and entrepreneurship. In India, OpenAI is training school teachers to plan lessons and improve student engagement with AI. Students in Colombia regularly use Meta’s AI bots in the WhatsApp messaging app, while teachers in Kenya plan lessons with AI tools. Mattel, the U.S. toy company and maker of Barbie dolls, is partnering with OpenAI to develop AI-powered toys.

With the Chinese government’s push, AI in education has become a multibillion-dollar industry. Schools have integrated a slew of AI-powered devices and software including personalized exercise books, and models capable of grading stacks of test papers in minutes.

People are buying things randomly because it’s AI.”

Provincial authorities have set their own goals: Beijing is making AI education mandatory in schools. Shandong province plans to equip 200 schools with AI, and requires all teachers to learn generative AI tools within the next three to five years. Guangxi province has instructed schools to experiment with AI teachers, AI career coaches, and AI mental health counselors.

Still, AI has not yet transformed education in meaningful ways, Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Kansas, told Rest of World. Compared with U.S. schools, which have more freedom to design their own teaching methods, Chinese schools still follow state-designed curricula with little room for experimentation despite adopting AI, he said. 

“AI is not making a huge difference at this moment,” Zhao said. “People are buying things randomly because it’s AI.” 

On Chinese social media, some teachers have complained that AI adoption is performative, adds to their workload, and that some systems are intrusive. 

The pushback has not stopped schools from embracing new AI products. 

One startup, Ling Xin Intelligence, rolled out AI therapy booths at nearly 200 schools this year. Students confide in the AI agents about their anxieties over coursework or family relationships, chief executive officer Zheng Shuliang told Rest of World.

“Some children do not want to talk to the teachers so much,” Zheng said. “They prefer talking to AI inside the little booths.” 

An overreliance on AI could hurt children’s ability to think on their own and communicate with teachers and classmates, Sun Sun Lim, a professor at the Singapore Management University who researches education technology, told Rest of World. 

“We need to think about how to use these [AI] platforms in ways that will actually allow the child to grow rather than to make the child lazy,” she said.

But for most Chinese parents and educators, AI’s promise of helping children get better grades is too good to ignore. 

If young people are relying more and more on automated responses, they are losing the ability to do that thinking for themselves.”

Over the summer, Wu made her son do Chinese, English, and math exercises on an iFlytek AI learning tablet. Companies including BaiduiBaiduBaidu is a Chinese technology company that operates the country’s biggest search engine and video-streaming service iQiyi.READ MORE and Zuoyebang — which means “homework help” — sell millions of such tablets. Tens of thousands of AI study centers have sprung up across the country, claiming children can self-learn through the tablets without needing parents or tutors.

The tablet generates personalized tests and keeps a record of the child’s performance. It cost more than $1,500, Wu said, but it was still cheaper than in-person classes.

“We were able to make do without human tutors,” she said. 

The prevalence of AI in the country means parents are turning to it even for minding their babies. Doubao, ByteDanceiByteDanceByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company that owns TikTok and Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok with a successful e-commerce arm.READ MORE’s AI app, features a real-time voice chat that parents of young children have found especially useful. On social network Xiaohongshu, users have posted about Doubao narrating stories to their children or soothing them when they cried, sometimes adopting the persona of a cartoon character.

Tong Mingbo, a 31-year-old in the eastern city of Hangzhou, let her 4-year-old son chat with Doubao when she needed a break, she told Rest of World. The chatbot, in a gentle female voice, conversed with the child about bananas, robots, kindergarten, and his favorite food, tofu. 

Tong said she is worried that exposure to AI could affect her child’s development. After interacting with Doubao, her son became impatient with her, possibly because the AI chatbot was so accommodating, she said. 

But when she feels tired and has no help on hand, she might turn to the AI chatbot again, she said. 

“The child would otherwise never let me sleep,” Tong said. “When he was chatting with Doubao, I got to take a 20-minute nap.”