AI Today: Schools can turn AI off. Google Search goes with it.

Google has told schools something it had not quite said out loud before. There is no longer a version of Google Search without AI in it.

AI Today is a series from Fíor, a natural language classifier that predicts whether a piece of text was more likely written by a person or by AI. Each piece explains one development in AI and shows where the claims come from.

This week Google announced that, from 2027, its AI features will be switched off by default for school pupils' accounts in the US, from kindergarten to the end of high school. Schools will choose what to switch on: the Gemini chatbot, its research notebook tool, and Google Search. That last item is the catch. Because Search now has AI built into it, through the AI summaries that appear above results, a school that wants no AI at all has to turn off Search for those pupils too.

The default flips

The change follows a year of pushback. Earlier this year Common Sense Media, a children's advocacy group, rated Google's AI-powered search an unacceptable risk for students and said schools should be able to switch the AI off. Schools that tried found they could not, short of blocking Google altogether. When Google opened its Gemini chatbot to more school pupils, some educators argued that the default should be asking permission, not switching it on and waiting for objections.

Off by default is a real change. It means a school has to choose AI rather than opt out of it. We have seen the same shift elsewhere recently, in New York's new law on chatbots and children: when the default changes, so does who has to act.

A choice, or a condition

How you read the Search exception depends on what you think a choice is.

Google's defenders say it is simply honest. One Bluesky user argued that this is not pressure but logic: a strict no-AI policy has to include Search, because Google Search is now built on AI. Schools remain free to set whatever policy they want.

Critics say the choice is not a real one. Google's tools run through classrooms across the US, from Chromebooks to Classroom to email, and few schools can give up Google Search without disrupting lessons. The Guardian focused on the lack of any AI-free version of Search, and AP's reporting raised wider worries from parents and educators about how much influence one company has over how children learn to find information.

Both readings rest on the same fact. For millions of pupils, Google Search is how they find out about almost anything, including the news.

That is where this matters beyond schools. If the first thing a student reads on any topic is an AI-written summary, the question of who wrote what they are reading starts very early. Schools will be able to switch most of Google's AI off. The one place they cannot is the place most people start.

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