By Sunny Wang
Publication Date: 2025-12-27 19:15:00
When she’s busy, Lu Qijun puts her phone on her son’s desk before he starts his homework.
The camera is on – and it stays on.
As Ms. Lu’s son lies down, a calm voice on the phone reminds him to sit up. As he fiddles 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 southern China’s Guangdong province, is not in the room.
The voice belongs to Dola, a Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot developed by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok.
According to Chinese statistics platform QuestMobile, Ms Lu is one of about 172 million monthly users of the app.
In addition to monitoring homework, the app also acts as a tutor.
Ms. Lu said the AI could monitor her son’s homework when she was busy. (Delivered)
On social media, Ms. Lu shares light-hearted videos of her son responding to the chatbot’s instructions, attracting thousands of views from Chinese parents.
The appeal, she said, isn’t just convenience.