Turkish student creates custom AI device for cheating university exam, gets arrested

Enlarge / A photo illustration of what a shirt-button camera could look like. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

On Saturday, Turkish police arrested and detained a university student who is accused of developing an elaborate scheme to use AI and hidden devices to help him cheat on an exam, reports Reuters and The Daily Mail.

The unnamed student is reportedly jailed pending trial after the incident, which took place in the southwestern province of Isparta, where the student was caught behaving suspiciously during the TYT. The TYT is a nationally held university aptitude exam that determines a person’s eligibility to attend a university in Turkey—and cheating on the high-stakes exam is a serious offense.

According to police reports, the student used a camera disguised as a shirt button, connected to AI software via a “router” (possibly a mistranslation of a cellular modem) hidden in the sole of their shoe. The system worked by scanning the exam questions using the button camera, which then relayed the information to an unnamed AI model. The software generated the correct answers and recited them to the student through an earpiece.