Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, sent a letter to Google on Monday telling the tech giant to allow schools to disable the artificial intelligence features within its search engine.
The letter cited a New York Times article last week reporting that Google planned to turn off student access to certain A.I.-related services — including its Gemini A.I. tool and search — giving schools the option of turning any back on.
But schools will not have the ability to turn off A.I. features in search if they want to keep using it to run queries, Google said. That’s because tools like A.I. Overview and A.I. Mode are too “deeply integrated” into search, the company said. A.I. Mode is a chatbot-like feature while A.I. Overview generates search summaries. There will also be a new student A.I. chat feature, Guided Learning, meant to assist with schoolwork while tamping down on A.I. cheating.
The tech industry is facing heightened public concern that chatbots can hinder students’ learning and pose risks to children’s mental health. And Google’s announcement last week set off criticism from some politicians and nonprofit groups that the tech giant’s insistence on keeping A.I. features in search was undermining schools’ abilities to make learning and safety decisions for their students.
“Despite the increasing concern over A.I. chatbots’ risks to minors, Google is using its dominant position in the education technology sector to push A.I. chatbots onto children and teenagers, whether or not their schools believe the technology is safe,” Mr. Markey said in the letter.
“That is not a choice,” he added. “It is an ultimatum to effectively force schools to enable generative AI.”
Google said last week that the changes it was making would more easily allow schools to control student access to A.I. The company said its new A.I. school feature, Guided Learning, would help students work through questions rather than provide answers.
Mr. Markey’s letter also cited a Times story from August reporting that Google had turned on A.I. features in Google Classroom, a schoolwork assignment app, for K-12 students in schools that had enabled its Gemini chatbot. Google now plans to turn those off.
In his letter, Mr. Markey asked Google whether it would change course and allow schools to disable student access to the A.I. features within search without losing access to the search engine. He also asked the company whether it was “technically feasible” for it to provide K-12 students, who are logged into their school Google accounts, with search results that did not include A.I.-generated responses or guidance.
Additionally, he requested that the company provide any research it had conducted on the safety and learning effects of the A.I. features on search by the end of this month.
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