Across China, where education is famously cutthroat, parents are turning to artificial intelligence to gain a competitive edge. Some are making interactive learning games or using chatbots to grade their children’s homework. Others are using A.I.-powered gadgets to get past a language barrier.

在中国各地，教育竞争之激烈众所周知，家长们正纷纷转向人工智能，希望获取竞争优势。一些家长制作互动学习游戏，或用聊天机器人批改孩子的作业。还有一些家长借助由人工智能驱动的小工具来跨越语言障碍。

Their eagerness to experiment is one example of how Chinese users are embracing A.I. for learning, even as many in the United States worry that it feeds students misinformation or erodes critical thinking. This cultural rift is backed by data: A 2025 global survey led by the services firm KPMG found that more than 90 percent of Chinese said they felt optimistic about the technology, compared to just over 50 percent in the United States.

他们热衷于尝试新技术，这体现了中国用户在学习领域对人工智能的积极接纳；尽管许多美国人担心它会给学生灌输错误信息，或削弱审辩性思维。这种文化差异也有数据为证：2025年毕马威咨询主导的一项全球调查发现，超过90%的中国受访者表示对这项技术感到乐观，而在美国，这一比例仅略高于50%。

The enthusiasm in China has fueled a sprawling, often unchecked, marketplace for educational technology that is worth more than $43 billion by some estimates, and where gimmicks and exaggerated marketing are common. Yet for some families, the tools are providing genuine relief. Three parents shared videos of their routines, showing how A.I., while imperfect, has made parenting and teaching their children a little easier.

中国的这股热情催生了一个庞大且往往缺乏监管的教育科技市场，据一些估计，该市场规模已超过430亿美元，在这里，噱头和夸大宣传亦随处可见。然而对一些家庭来说，这些工具确实带来了实实在在的帮助。三位家长分享了他们的日常视频，展示了人工智能虽然不完美，但让育儿和教学变得稍微轻松了一些。

A.I. Translation Mask

智能翻译口罩

As a mother of two with a full-time public relations job, Zheng Wenqi, 42, had little time to practice English herself, let alone teach her children. She knew her 9-year-old son needed more conversational experience but didn’t know where to turn.

42岁的郑文琪（音）有一份全职的公关工作，还是两个孩子的母亲，她几乎没有时间练习自己的英语，更不用说教孩子了。她知道九岁的儿子需要更多的会话经验，但不知从何入手。

“There just wasn’t an opportunity for him to start talking,” said Ms. Zheng, who lives in northern China’s Heilongjiang Province.

“就没有这个契机让他开口，”住在中国北部黑龙江省的郑女士说。

Then she saw a livestream promoting a gadget she could wear to make her conversant in English.

后来，她在网上的直播中看到一种可穿戴设备，这种设备能让她流利地说英语。

It has two parts: a mask that covers her mouth, and a speaker that hangs around her neck. Ms. Zheng speaks Chinese into the mask, which also muffles her voice. Then, a translation comes out of the speaker. She began wearing it around the house, for 30 to 60 minutes a day.

该设备由两部分组成：一个遮住嘴巴的口罩，以及一个挂在脖子上的扬声器。郑女士对着能消音的口罩说中文，然后扬声器里就会传出翻译的英文。她开始在家里戴它，每天30到60分钟。

The roughly $375 device, called Native Language Star, draws on speech and language models developed by several Chinese technology firms, according to the company, based in Shenzhen, that makes the device.

这款名为母语星球的设备售价约人民币2500元。制造商是一家位于深圳的企业，据其宣称，该产品利用了中国几家科技公司开发的语音和语言模型。

Ms. Zheng said the translations were sometimes stiff. But she said that after about a month, her son was speaking more confidently and initiating conversations.

郑女士表示，翻译有时会比较生硬。但她说，大约一个月后，儿子说英语变得自信了，并会主动发起对话。

Ms. Zheng also uses the device with her 5-year-old daughter, who had never learned English before. The child can now describe daily tasks, like getting dressed and putting her shoes on.

郑女士还会与五岁的女儿一起使用该设备，女儿之前从未学过英语。现在，她已经能描述穿衣、穿鞋等日常活动。

“We say, ‘Now is English time, let’s all speak in English,’ and I’ll put that thing on,” Ms. Zheng said. “And then they just say whatever they know.”

“我们会说：‘我们说，现在是英语时间啊，我们大家都说英语，然后我带我挂着那个东西说，”郑女士说，“然后他俩就是自己会啥说啥。”

A Chatbot With ‘Eyes’

长了“眼睛”的聊天机器人

Li Linyun, a stay-at-home mother, used to fight with her 10-year-old daughter, Weixiao, over her studies.

全职母亲李琳云（音）以前常常因为学习问题和10岁的女儿微笑（音）发生争执。

Now Ms. Li has delegated supervision of Weixiao’s schoolwork to an A.I. chatbot.

现在，李女士已经把监督微笑做功课的任务交给了一款人工智能聊天机器人。

“It’s a 24-hour online teacher, and it’s knowledgeable and extremely patient,” said Ms. Li, who lives in Hunan Province, in central China.

“它就是一个24小时在线的一个老师， 而且知识渊博，还非常具有耐心，”住在华中省份湖南的李女士说。

Ms. Li uses Doubao, China’s most popular A.I. chatbot, which was created by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. It has a camera function, which parents refer to as Doubao’s “eyes.” People can use it to learn more about their surroundings, for instance by asking Doubao to identify plants or give more details about museum artifacts. (ChatGPT has a similar function for paying users; Doubao’s is free.)

李女士使用的是中国最受欢迎的人工智能聊天机器人豆包，由TikTok的母公司字节跳动开发。它具有摄像头功能，家长们称之为豆包的“眼睛”。人们可以用它来了解周围的环境，例如让豆包识别植物，或介绍博物馆文物的更多信息。（ChatGPT为付费用户提供类似功能；豆包则是免费的。）

After more experimentation, Ms. Li learned that Doubao could explain grammar rules better than she ever could.

经过多番尝试，李女士发现豆包对语法规则的解释比她自己清楚得多。

Weixiao said she liked that she could ask Doubao to repeat explanations as many times as she needed, while her teachers moved on quickly. “It explains in more detail, so I can understand,” she said.

微笑说，她喜欢可以随时让豆包反复解释，而她的老师通常很快就继续讲新的内容了。“我觉得它讲的更详细，让我能听懂，”她说。

Ms. Li also began asking Doubao to grade completed homework assignments by uploading a photo to the app.

李女士还开始让豆包给已经做完的作业评分，只需给作业拍照然后上传到应用中。

The chatbot identifies wrong answers and corrects them, Ms. Li said, though it sometimes makes mistakes.

李女士说，这个聊天机器人可以找出错误答案并进行纠正，尽管有时也会出错。

The camera can also monitor Weixiao’s posture. But Ms. Li said she rarely used that feature, because her daughter didn’t like the feeling of being watched.

摄像头还可以监测微笑的坐姿。但李女士说，她很少使用这个功能，因为女儿不喜欢被监视的感觉。

Ms. Li said she wasn’t worried about feeding so much footage of Weixiao to the chatbot. In the social media age, “we don’t have a lot of privacy anyway,” she said.

李女士表示，她并不担心向聊天机器人提供这么多关于女儿的影像。在社交媒体时代，“我觉得我们也没有很多隐私，”她说。

And the benefits were more than worthwhile. She no longer had to spend hundreds of dollars a month on English tutoring, and Weixiao’s grades had improved. “It makes educational resources more equitable for ordinary people,” Ms. Li said.

而且由此带来的好处是值得的。她无需每月再花费几千块请英语家教，微笑的成绩也提高了。“可以让我们普通人的这个教育资源能够更加公平一些，”李女士说。

Her relationship with Weixiao had improved, too, she said. “To ease tensions in a parent-child relationship, you can’t spend too much time on homework,” she said. “Just encouraging her is enough.”

她还表示，自己和女儿的关系也改善了。“然后也就是亲子关系，其实如果想要缓解的话，真的是不能在作业上花太多时间，”她说，“给她鼓励就行了。”

Creating Learning Games

制作学习游戏

Yin Xingyu, 37, uses A.I. chatbots like DeepSeek in her job as a marketer in Shenzhen. She started to wonder whether the tool could also help her 6-year-old daughter.

37岁的殷星昱在深圳从事市场营销工作，在工作中会使用DeepSeek这样的人工智能聊天机器人。她开始思考这个工具是否也能帮到她六岁的女儿。

Ms. Yin didn’t know how to code, so she turned to what’s known as “vibecoding” instead: using A.I. models to build software by describing what you want in plain language. She worked with DeepSeek to build an interactive English word game for her daughter. The chatbot wrote the code for her.

殷星昱不会编程，于是转而使用一种被称为“氛围编程”的方法：用自然语言描述需求，让人工智能模型帮助构建软件。她与DeepSeek一起为女儿开发了一个互动式英语单词游戏。代码是由聊天机器人为她写的。

She is now sharing the prompts on social media so other parents can input them into their own chatbots and replicate her games.

她在社交媒体上分享了这些提示词，以便其他家长可以将其输入自己的聊天机器人，复制她的游戏。

Ms. Yin has also experimented with other models. She used Google’s A.I. image generator, Nano Banana Pro, to create comic strips that used her daughter’s Chinese vocabulary words, starring her favorite characters from movies like “Zootopia” and “Frozen.”

殷星昱还尝试了其他模型。她使用谷歌的人工智能图像生成工具Nano Banana Pro，用女儿能理解的中文词创作连环画，主角是她女儿最喜欢的《疯狂动物城》和《冰雪奇缘》等电影中的角色。

Ms. Yin said she didn’t think that her daughter would become dependent on A.I., because she designed the games to prioritize active thinking over passive stimulation. She plans to encourage her daughter to use the tools even more as she gets older; for example, by using chatbots to brainstorm ideas for essays.

殷星昱说，她并不担心女儿会对人工智能产生依赖，因为她设计这些游戏时更强调主动思考，而不是被动的刺激。随着女儿长大，她甚至计划鼓励她更多地使用这些工具，比如利用聊天机器人为作文构思点子。

“Most likely that’s how the future will be, and I want her to get used to it from a young age,” she said.

“我觉得大概率这个未来是这样子的，你要去习惯，”她说。

‘A.I. Self-Study Rooms’

“AI自习室”

Not every effort to use A.I. for education has been successful. Some companies have rolled out products that critics say are more hype than substance.

并不是所有利用人工智能进行教育的尝试都取得了成功。一些公司推出的产品，被批评者认为噱头大于实质。

So-called “A.I. self-study rooms,” for example, are advertised as physical spaces where students can learn from A.I.-powered tablets that tailor learning plans to individual needs. Fees range from a few dollars an hour to hundreds of dollars a month.

例如所谓的“AI自习室”，被宣传为一种实体学习空间，学生可以在那里使用由人工智能驱动的平板电脑学习，这些设备会根据个人需求制定学习计划。收费从每小时几十元到每月上千元不等。

A state media report from 2024 about the trend showed a classroom in Zhejiang Province lined with cubicles, where students sat quietly in front of tablets that assessed their completion of assignments for accuracy and speed.

2024年，有官媒报道了浙江的一个AI自习室，里面排列着隔间，学生们安静地坐在平板电脑前，平板电脑会根据学生完成作业的准确率和速度进行评估。

But some parents and former employees have complained that the “A.I.” is merely a marketing facade for prerecorded lessons or other less advanced technology, and that the tablets are just basic, off-the-shelf devices.

但一些家长和前员工抱怨说，所谓的“人工智能”其实只是营销外衣，背后不过是预先录制的课程或其他较为落后的技术，而那些平板电脑也只是普通的现成设备。

State media outlets have also accused the operators of some of the centers of trying to circumvent a 2021 ban on for-profit tutoring that was meant to shield children from having too much homework and families from spending too heavily. Many tutoring services have continued to operate underground. (The study centers have said that A.I. is doing the teaching, not tutors, so the ban does not apply.)

官方媒体还指责，一些自习室的经营者试图绕过中国2021年出台的营利性教辅禁令。该禁令旨在减少孩子的作业负担，并避免家庭在补课上花费过多。但许多教辅服务仍在地下运营。（这些自习室则表示，教学由人工智能完成，而不是由辅导老师，因此禁令不适用。）

Many of the study rooms have already shut down, according to media reports. The New York Times twice tried to visit one in Beijing, only to find it locked and empty, with posters purporting to show reviews from satisfied parents still on the walls.

据媒体报道，许多这样的自习室已经关闭。《纽约时报》曾两次尝试探访北京的一家AI自习室，却发现大门紧锁、空无一人，墙上的海报展示着家长的好评。

May Zeng, 24, worked at a study room in Jiangxi Province for two months last year, where she was in charge of making sure that students didn’t slack off. She thought that parents didn’t care as much about A.I. as they did about having somewhere to put their children.

24岁的曾梅（音）去年在江西一家自习室工作了两个月，她的职责是确保学生不会偷懒。她认为，家长其实并不那么在意人工智能，而更在意是否有一个地方可以把孩子送过去。

Still, A.I. was getting used — by Ms. Zeng herself. As part of her duties, she had to write feedback on each student’s progress.

不过，人工智能还是被用上了——只是使用的人是曾梅自己。作为工作的一部分，她需要为每个学生写学习进展反馈。

“When I found I really had nothing to say, I’d just throw it to the A.I.,” she said. “In this A.I. self-study room, I was the one using the most A.I.”

“我发现自己有时候词穷之后我就会给扔给它，”她说，“所以觉得在这个AI自习室，其实我用AI是用的最多的”。