Google is giving K-12 schools a choice about AI tools in the classroom, but there is a significant catch: blocking AI tools also means giving up Google Search entirely.
After consulting educators, researchers, and lawmakers, Google decided that schools using its education products will be opted out of AI tools by default. It will be up to administrators to manually enable them when these changes roll out in the coming months.
The affected products are Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. There is no picking and choosing—schools either allow all the AI or none of it. This mirrors Google's consumer approach, where executives say Google Search is AI search and most searches now provide an AI Overview at the top.
For schools, the decision is difficult. The ubiquity of Chromebooks has made Google's education products huge in schools, but opting out of AI means losing search functionality entirely as Google pushes users toward its conversational AI Mode chatbot and sees AI search as the future.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing