Google links school search access to AI use in new policy
Google will require US K-12 school districts to enable its generative AI tools if they want students to retain access to the company’s standard search engine, a policy that could affect millions of students from next year.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Google said AI tools built into its education software would be switched off by default for K-12 students starting next year.
School administrators will have to explicitly enable access to products such as Gemini through their management consoles.
However, the controls also include Google’s basic search engine, meaning schools that opt out of the company’s AI tools could lose access to standard Google Search.
By grouping Google Search with Gemini, Gemini Notebook and Gemini in Classroom under the same settings, the company has effectively created an all-or-nothing choice for school districts.
Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president for education, told The New York Times that the company’s AI features are deeply integrated into Search, making it difficult to offer one without the other.
Google also announced the global rollout of its Guided Learning features, which aim to encourage students to think through problems rather than receive direct answers.
Under the feature, searches for homework-related topics can produce step-by-step prompts designed to help students understand subjects such as physics formulas and book reports.
“This is a particularly clear example of the tech industry going out of its way to force A.I. on us all — even if we have said we don’t want it,” Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California, told The New York Times.
Google’s education tools are widely used in US schools. More than 150 million students and teachers rely on its services, including Google Workspace for Education and Google Classroom.
The company also has a strong presence in classrooms through its Chromebooks, which account for roughly 60% of classroom devices, according to the figures cited in the source material.
The announcement follows criticism of Google’s August decision to enable AI features by default in its Classroom app.
Some school leaders and parents had argued that administrators should decide when and how students use AI.
The latest policy reverses the default-on approach but could limit the options available to schools that want to restrict AI while keeping standard Search.
New York City Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District, the country’s two largest public school districts, have moved to broadly restrict generative AI on district devices. Together, they serve around 1.4 million students.
Los Angeles officials had specifically hoped to retain standard Google Search while disabling AI Overviews, a compromise that the new policy appears to rule out.