Google announced Tuesday that early next year it would turn off artificial intelligence tools in its popular software for K-12 students, unless school administrators explicitly choose to make such tools available. Executives at the tech giant said they wanted to be responsive to educators and parents who have asked for more control in how children interact with A.I. But there is a catch: Schools that choose to restrict A.I. entirely will also lose access to Google search.
A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.” Google is by far the dominant technology player in K-12 classrooms. Google’s suite of education apps — including Gmail, Docs and an assignment platform called Classroom — is ubiquitous. Google Chromebooks, low-cost laptops, are the most widely issued student devices in U.S. schools. And Google is synonymous with internet search, a crucial tool for students across the globe.
The company’s new strategy underscores Google’s powerful role in American education. If school leaders want continued student access to search within the company’s ecosystem, they will be forced to embrace Google’s A.I. In recent months, Google has been promoting its Gemini chatbot as a valuable educational tool, saying it can aid teachers in planning lessons and serve as a personalized tutor for students. A new student version of Gemini, Guided Learning, is supposed to make it harder for students to use A.I. to cheat.
“We’re evolving our approach,” said Mr. Phillips. He promised tools that would “support the productive struggle” of learning and tamp down on students turning to A.I. for easy answers. In August, Google turned on A.I. features as the default option inside its Classroom app for K-12 schools that had allowed students separate access to the company’s Gemini chatbot. The move upset some school leaders, who felt schools should be able to decide how and when students used Google’s A.I.
Google’s August change will now be reversed.
A parent movement has been pushing back against the use of A.I. in schools, and against screen time more generally. While A.I. chatbots can be useful tools for research and coding, they can also easily be used to cheat on school assignments and can provide false information. Research shows chatbots can also hinder critical thinking and ensnare adolescents in emotional dependency.
Last week, New York State passed a chatbot safety law that would prohibit companies from providing a variety of A.I. features for minors. And in September, the nation’s two largest school districts, in New York City and Los Angeles — both Google clients — broadly restricted student access to generative artificial intelligence on school devices. Officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District said at the time that they were hoping students would be able to conduct Google searches with A.I. overviews turned off. The overviews are A.I.-generated summaries that appear at the top of searches. They can dissuade students from seeking out multiple sources of information. On Monday, Google executives said that for districts that choose to allow A.I., there will be two options for search inside school-issued accounts, beginning in early 2027. One option will be search with A.I. overviews and A.I. chats turned on, similar to the current consumer experience. The other will be search using Guided Learning, the student version of Google’s Gemini chatbot.
Guided Learning is intended to guide students through a topic step-by-step without providing them with answers that could short-circuit learning. It is supposed to offer an experience modeled on one-to-one tutoring.
The consumer version of Guided Learning is already available within Gemini, and can enable cheating. In a reporter’s test, it produced a detailed essay in response to an Advanced Placement history prompt.
There are greater restrictions in the school version that is currently being piloted, according to Brit Mennuti, product lead for Google Classroom. She said teachers would be able to review students’ chatbot transcripts, among other capabilities.
Member when software companies offered ultra cheap student licenses because they recognized the long term value of a student learning and getting accustomed to their program? I member.
This seems very, very shortsighted.
Exactly this! Imagine a whole generation associating search with DDG or Kagi? That would really move the needle in the future regarding tech adoption to alternative platforms
github had (has?) free pro accounts for students back when github didn't offer private repos for free. if you forgot to cancel your student account when you graduated, github would simply hold your private repos hostage unless you paid for them. no option given to simply make them public repos. i would have lost mountains of my work had they not fucked up and unlocked my repos for a couple hours, which allowed me to clone everything i didn't have locally and migrate to gitlab.
so basically, sometimes those student offers build in scam tactics.
How is that a scam tactic? You got access to private repos for some amount of time. It is clear to any reasonable person that you would lose access after the pro version ends.
If you didn't want your repos to be "held hostage", just clone them before the subscription expires.
I benefitted from student GitHub pro too, and I used it knowing that the day would come where my free subscription would end and I'd lose access to it.
that would be fair if they would just be barred from making additional changes, issues and comments. or if they deleted the data. that would even free up storage at github. but no. they kept the data in the hopes students will pay to access their own content, and then perhaps forget to cancel the subscription.
If they deleted the data you'd be calling it a murder instead of holding it hostage lol.
When I board a plane, I know that when the plane lands, I gotta take my luggage with me when I exit the plane.
When I stop paying for a VPS, I loose all access to that VPS. When I close an email account, I lose those emails.
When my subscription to private repos ends. I no longer have access to those private repos. Slow storage is pretty cheap. They can just move private repos from users that have stopped paying into long term storage, and free up precious nvme storage.
I don't usually defend corporations. But this is a service you signed up for, knowing the conditions of the deal.
It's like complaining that you're obligated to return the keys to your hotel after the agreed upon date/time.
that would be fair if they would just be barred from making additional changes, issues and comments. or if they deleted the data. that would even free up storage at github. but no. they kept the data in the hopes students will pay to access their own content, and then perhaps forget to cancel the subscription.
Student discounted software started when most of the corporate world was still using typewriters and paper. Students learned the new-fangled software and carried into their new jobs.
Today, those same businesses rely on Microsoft Office and Google search, and those monopolies are obviously going to leverage their monopolies to force AI, Teams, or whatever other Next Big Thing onto unwilling schools.
But Google needs the return on AI right now! Those kids are just products that produced data to be sold.