Students in kindergarten through 12th grade will have four Google products switched off on their school accounts unless their school decides otherwise, Google says. In a post on Nov. 3, Chris Phillips, who runs Google's education business, said Gemini, Google's AI chatbot, along with Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search, will be entirely off for those accounts until school administrators turn them on.
Phillips told reporters that AI is built so deeply into Search that it cannot simply be turned off, so a school that wants no AI has to go without Search, he said. Search now shows AI Overviews, AI-written summaries that appear automatically at the top of results, and offers AI Mode, a chat feature. Earlier this year Google switched Gemini on for all students by default, catching many districts off guard, according to a news report.
Google says it made the change after listening to schools, teachers, researchers and policymakers. In an assessment last updated in July, Common Sense Media, a group that rates AI products for kids, rates the AI answers in Google Search at its lowest level, an unacceptable risk for kids and teens. It noted that schools could already block the Gemini chatbot from Google's admin tools, but had no way to turn off the AI in Search. In its tests, AI Mode gave a complete answer ready to hand in for all 180 homework assignments it tried, from math problem sets to essays.
Google is also bringing Guided Learning, a mode already in its Gemini app that coaches students with questions and step-by-step hints instead of handing over the answer, to Classroom and Search. It is available worldwide in Google Classroom from Nov. 3, when a teacher assigns it. In Search, when Google's systems detect certain kinds of homework help, such as a pasted physics problem or a book report, students will be walked through it step by step instead of shown the answer. That version starts as a test in some U.S. schools later this month.
In a trial Google ran with more than 300 University of Tokyo students, everyone spent half a day studying statistics with ordinary web tools, and half could also use Guided Learning in the Gemini app. Google says that group's test scores rose 8.1 percentage points, against 5.3 for the others. The study was Google's, of university students rather than schoolchildren, over a single session.
Google's post gives no start date for switching the tools off. It says it will share details with schools in the coming months, and a news report says the wider rollout of the changes comes early next year. The switch covers student accounts that schools manage, and students will still meet AI in Search on their personal devices, a Common Sense Media official told reporters.