Very easy to fool. For example, when it asked me "Which city is the capital of Australia?" providing the answer "the capital city of Australia" was judged to be correct. Same when asked about the author of a novel and answering "the author of 'novel'".
I did 7 in a row simply refecting back the question.
You're correct. My other phones were from my wireless carrier, and didn't support unlocking the bootloader, so I had to keep upgrading (over a period of years.) I bought the Zenfone to try to break that cycle. The old devices still function, aside from being outside of vendor support (or in the case of one, incompatible with the carrier's network after infrastructure upgrades.)
I just sent feedback to ASUS expressing my concern at the loss of bootloader unlocking. I have 2 perfectly good cell phones that are e-waste now, simply because the vendor stopped issuing patches, and the bootloader can't be unlocked to use LineageOS. I bought a Zenfone recently because I thought I'd be avoiding that issue. If they don't fix this, I won't be buying another one. ASUS CEO contact page: https://www.asus.com/us/support/article/787/
I did 7 in a row simply refecting back the question.