Google will switch off Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search for K-12 student accounts until school administrators turn them on. The catch is that a school can’t keep Search while blocking Google’s AI. Google announced the change in a November 3 blog post.
Google’s new default for K-12 student accounts
Chris Phillips is Google’s VP and General Manager for Education. He wrote that the update followed feedback from schools, teachers, researchers and policymakers. In the post, he set out the new default:
Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.
Google hasn’t given a date. It says it will share details with schools in the coming months, before the changes roll out.
Blocking Google’s AI means blocking Search
An opt-in sounds like more control for schools. In practice, the control is all or nothing. Phillips told The New York Times that Google’s Search and AI are tightly integrated, as reported by TechCrunch and The Verge. If a school restricts AI altogether, students lose access to Search. They see a message saying their school has made it unavailable.
The Verge adds that admins won’t get an option to turn off Gemini-powered features while keeping Search. Google’s position is that the two can’t be separated.
That leaves schools with a hard choice. A district wary of AI in class must also give up the search engine students use for research. For parents, it means a school’s AI policy decides whether a child’s school account can search the web at all.
Guided Learning arrives in Google Classroom
The same post brings Guided Learning, Gemini’s step-by-step study mode, to Google Classroom. It is available globally from November 3. Google is also building similar step-by-step help into Search for student accounts. That starts with a pilot in select US schools.
Source: Google, TechCrunch, The Verge
This post was written with AI assistance from public sources and published under the editorial responsibility of AndroidPure’s editor. How we work.
