AI is changing after-school parenting for many Chinese families
AI is becoming a regular presence at homework time in many Chinese households. Experts say where families draw the line matters more than the technology itself.
When she is busy, Lu Qijun places her phone on her son's desk before he starts his homework.
The camera is on — and it stays on.
When Ms Lu's son slouches, a calm voice on the phone reminds him to sit up. When he fidgets with his pen, the voice tells him to stop. And when his pace slows, the voice urges him to work faster.
Ms Lu, a television journalist in China's southern province of Guangdong, is not in the room.
The voice belongs to Dola, a Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot developed by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok.
Ms Lu is one of about 172 million monthly users of the app, according to Chinese statistic platform QuestMobile.
In addition to homework monitoring, the app also acts like a tutor.
Lu Qijun says AI can monitor her son doing homework when she is busy. (Supplied)
On social media, Ms Lu shares light-hearted videos of her son reacting to the chatbot's instructions, attracting thousands of views from Chinese parents.
The appeal, she said, was not only convenience.
As China's economic growth slows, many families are reassessing how much they can afford to spend on education.
Private tutoring, once common among China's millions of urban middle-class households, has become harder to justify, even as many students continue to spend several hours a day on schoolwork and extracurricular classes.
"Dola can keep an eye on him for me,"
Ms Lu said.
"Parents are anxious about spending heavily, only to end up with a 'rotten-tail kid'," she said, referring to a popular Chinese meme used to describe jobless young adults despite years of investment in their education.
Dola is an AI app owned by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance. (Reuters: Dado Ruvic/Illustration)
The app allows Ms Lu to upload parenting books and study materials she trusts so that it can tailor its guidance to her son's needs.
Dola can also check her son's homework, explain why his answers are incorrect, and generate similar questions based on his mistakes.
"It's like having my own parenting bible," she said.
"Now I can read a book or answer messages while he is doing his homework."