Six Chinese AI Models Face Off in Gaokao Essay Contest: iFLYTEK Spark Leads the Pack

The pressure was on. The 2025 Chinese National College Entrance Examination, or Gaokao, rolled out its essay prompt: analyze the theme of expression in the face of adversity, using imagery from literary giants like Lao She, Ai Qing, and Mu Dan. The complex question, demanding nuanced understanding, initially left many students, and perhaps their parents, collectively sighing.

But amidst the academic battlefield, a different kind of contender entered the fray. In a recent test spearheaded by “Dianchang,” an independent tech media outlet from interface.com, a domestic large language model from iFLYTEK was tasked with tackling the demanding essay. Two human educators acted as judges. iFLYTEK’s Spark AI clinched the top spot, scoring a commendable 53 points, surpassing five other domestic AI models. This high-stakes challenge didn’t just demonstrate AI’s ability to generate text; it spotlighted its capacity for profound reasoning and humanistic analysis within the education sector. Spark’s resulting essay, “Using Songs as Blades to Break the Night, Casting Mountains and Rivers with Blood,” was hailed by experts as “exam-ready,” showcasing the model’s capacity for insightful analysis, cultural comprehension, and grand narrative construction. These capabilities represent a real breakthrough for domestic AI models entering the education field.

(Note: The essays were submitted in text form to each model, with the “internet access” function disabled. Both judges then provided scores and comments, the final score reflects the average.)

Spark’s victory wasn’t a stroke of luck; it was the culmination of sophisticated reasoning capabilities in the field of education. Expert feedback from two educators, had extensive experience teaching the Gaokao for a decade each. The assessment highlighted its ability to precisely interpret challenging essay prompts, quickly identifying the core conflict between “silence and expression,” elevating the theme to the epic scale of “using songs as blades to cut through darkness, writing with blood.” Furthermore, the essay was praised for its structured logic, employing a five-part structure: the energy that wells in individual silence (Qu Yuan) → art as the spark of hope (Du Fu, Beethoven) → the passing down of civilization (the guardians of the Mogao Grottoes, workers restoring the Forbidden City). As one expert put it, the structure was “as tight as a historical scroll, with a depth of thought exceeding exam boundaries.” Lastly, the essay demonstrated a potent combination of both literary flair and philosophical depth, transforming cultural symbols into emotional carriers. The result was a “vast narrative that fuses the ancient and modern,” illustrating the deep-level capability to deconstruct humanistic spirit with technology.

(Screenshot of iFLYTEK Spark’s essay)

Spark’s performance, powered by a domestic computing platform, signifies much more than a technical achievement. It reinforces the value of a fully self-reliant AI education technology framework built on deep reasoning, educational understanding, and safety. The test also shows the potential for domestic AI models to continue to innovate at the highest levels.

iFLYTEK’s dominance in education stems from its AI system built on a “teaching-thinking chain”, which facilitates the entire process of “teaching, learning, testing, evaluating, and managing.” By seamlessly integrating internationally leading multimodal data collection (speech recognition awards), smart assessment (Gaokao essay scoring), and knowledge graph construction technologies, iFLYTEK has created an intelligent workflow: “data collection → learning analysis → path planning → precise teaching,” thereby achieving real-world, scaled, personalized education applications.

With two decades of experience and technology innovation, iFLYTEK is transforming the age-old ideal of made-to-measure education into an accessible reality. This pioneering path in China’s education sector will undoubtedly offer a fresh paradigm for educational intelligence across the globe.