Google to Turn Off AI and Search for K-12 Student Accounts Unless Schools Enable Them

Google said on Tuesday that it will switch off its Gemini AI products by default for K-12 student accounts in schools that use its education software, and that schools that do not enable them will also lose access to Google Search. Chris Phillips, Google's vice president and general manager of education, wrote in a blog post that Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Search will be off for student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on. Until Tuesday, Gemini was automatically activated for schools using Google Classroom. Google said Search is tightly integrated with its AI features. It said schools can enable one, two or all three of the services, and that students at schools that ban AI will see a message from their school saying search is unavailable. The company said it surveyed administrators and teachers before the change. It comes after criticism from advocacy groups and senators about the spread of Google's AI in classrooms.

Left-leaning outlets NBC News and CBS News lead with the policy and the criticism it drew. NBC's headline frames it as a cutoff for schools that opt out, and it quotes Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, saying Google put its business interests ahead of children's education, and it points to earlier pressure from advocacy groups and senators. CBS's headline says Google will block search for schools that ban AI. It cites a Google spokesperson and Phillips's comments to The New York Times, and it reports New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani accusing Google of using monopoly power. The Right-leaning Washington Times, seen only as a short excerpt, uses a consumer-style headline addressed to readers whose schools ban AI, and says the AI tools will be turned off by early next year at a school's request. It stresses the loss of search for schools that eschew AI entirely, and the excerpt carries no critics' quotes. All three agree on the main facts. The difference is that the left-leaning pieces foreground opposition voices, while the right-leaning excerpt gives the timing and the search consequence. Alternative and independent outlets had not reported the story at the time of writing.