Student accounts in schools will start with Google’s AI products off. Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Search stay dark for K-12 students until an administrator at the school opts in. A school that wants no AI at all will also be giving up Search for those students, because Google treats the two as one product.
The company announced the change on 3 November and says the new controls reach schools “in the coming months”. It has not yet given schools the details of how the switch will work.
Google’s own explanation is that schools asked for more control. In its education blog post, Google describes the new default as “entirely off” and says it wants school leaders to have control and confidence. The catch is in what counts as an AI product. Ars Technica points out that Search is on the list, and quotes Google education VP Chris Phillips telling the New York Times that “Search and AI are deeply integrated”. A school that leaves AI off, he said, means students get no Search, only a note from the school that it is unavailable.
Alongside the controls Google is expanding Guided Learning, a Gemini study mode that asks a student questions and breaks a problem into steps rather than handing over the answer. It is available worldwide in Google Classroom from 3 November, where a teacher assigns it as an activity tied to class material and gets live insight into where the class is struggling. Engadget adds that in the school version, teachers can read what students typed to the chatbot.
Search gets the same treatment later this month, as a pilot in select US schools. If Search recognises that a student wants homework help, for instance a pasted physics question or a book report, it will respond with guiding prompts and not the solution. Google says it will widen the pilot to other districts in the coming months after collecting feedback from teachers.
The change follows an earlier reversal. Engadget notes that Google turned on some AI features by default in Classroom in August, drew objections from educators and backed off. The new default is the opposite: nothing is on until the school says so.
Ars Technica argues that Google expects most schools to value Search too much to refuse the AI. It also notes that Google could have built a Search without AI for schools and has not. Schools that object could move students to a search engine that lets AI features be disabled, such as DuckDuckGo.
Google has not said how many schools use student accounts with AI features today, or whether the Search pilot will include schools outside the United States.
