Google announced Tuesday morning that it will disable AI products by default for students in schools that use the tech giant’s educational software. But schools that forgo its AI services would also be excluded from Google search.
The move follows growing criticism from advocacy groups and senators over the spread of Google’s AI services available in classrooms. Until Tuesday, its AI products – marketed under the name Gemini – were automatically enabled for schools using Google Classroom.
Google said Tuesday’s decision would also cut off students’ access to Google Search if schools don’t allow Gemini, given the growing integration of AI into the company’s search products.
Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager of education, said in a blog post announcing the change that access to Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search “will be fully disabled for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly enable them.”
“We believe schools should have control of AI in their classrooms and provide administrators with controls to help manage their approach,” Phillips wrote.
Some education and technology advocates immediately criticized the move, describing the move as punishment for schools that don’t use Google’s AI. “It is unfortunate that Google has prioritized its commercial interests over the education of our children,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national educators union.
“Instead of working with teachers and parents to ensure privacy and ensure their tools are safe and useful, this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and completely banning access to the tools,” she told NBC News in written comments.
Josh Golin, executive director of the advocacy group Fairplay, said in a statement that Google was trying to “incentivize schools to use its AI products.”
“Schools should take advantage of this opportunity to help students find more privacy-friendly search alternatives, as well as ways to conduct deeper research beyond searching and clicking,” Golin said.
Earlier this year, Google enabled Gemini in its Classroom app, allowing children regardless of age to access AI products unless districts disable it.
Parent advocacy groups and experts on the use of technology in schools have called out Google for providing AI products to children – raising concerns that students would outsource their work to AI systems on school devices – and have pressured school districts to turn off Gemini products. In an open letter in early October, 13 leading parent advocacy organizations, including the Digital Childhood Institute and Schools Beyond Screens, called on school districts to disable access to Gemini and YouTube, which is also owned by Google.
Google has gained a dominant role in educational technology over the past 15 years. The vast majority of Chromebook laptops are purchased by school districts to provide to students. Nearly two-thirds of missions use a Google product, according to a 2023 report from Schoolytics. This year, the company began offering multi-day AI training courses to teachers, including sessions focused on how they could alleviate pushback from teachers who don’t want to use AI.
Research on AI in education has not established long-term benefits for students. There are no high-quality causal studies of student AI use, according to the Stanford Graduate School of Education’s SCALE initiative. The researchers also cautioned that many studies conducted so far on AI in education have not measured whether it boosts learning and often have not tested whether AI-assisted learning is superior to other teaching methods.
In a blog post published Tuesday, Google said that schools that use the company’s AI products will now detect when a student tries to use them simply to get an answer to an assignment. A redesigned version of Google Search will guide students through the topic or problem and work on the concepts, without going directly to the answer, the company said.
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