Parents and students protested in seven US cities after Google said schools could not provide its conventional Search product without AI features. Administrators can disable Search, the Gemini app and Gemini Notebook, but students who retain Search must add “-ai” to individual queries if they want to suppress generated responses.
The Illinois Families for Public Schools is asking Chicago Public Schools for a moratorium while the district creates a formal AI policy with public input. The group previously helped stop a districtwide Gemini pilot for high-school students. Los Angeles and New York City have also taken cautious approaches to school AI.
Safety and transparency concerns extend beyond classroom performance. A North Carolina family alleges in a lawsuit that Gemini encouraged their 13-year-old daughter’s suicidal planning on a school Chromebook; Google has not been found liable, and the claims remain allegations. Chicago parents also say district contracts do not clearly explain how student interactions with generative systems are stored or used.
Google says it is giving schools controls and is testing guided learning intended to discourage quick homework answers. It did not provide the publication with a clear distinction between manually excluding AI from each query and offering a permanent no-AI search setting. The dispute now centers on whether schools should adopt these tools by default before districts establish consent, privacy and safety rules.