The problem is structural. Google launched AI Mode for Search last year and made it available to everyone immediately, including education accounts. There is no toggle to disable AI features while keeping Search accessible. Parents can block Google.com entirely for child accounts. School administrators could do the same for Workspace for Education users. But as Amanda Bickerstaff of AI for Education put it: \u201cWhat are you going to say? That kids can\u2019t search the web?\u201d Google dominates classroom technology. It helmed a 1:1 device movement that put Chromebooks in schools across the US and now has millions of Workspace for Education users from kindergarten to postgrad.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoogle\u2019s AI Overview and AI Mode are undermining kids\u2019 education, supplying them with dangerous disinformation, and putting their very lives at risk,\u201d said David Monahan of child safety nonprofit Fairplay for Kids. \u201cIf Google is not even willing to disable AI features for students, schools should stop using Google products altogether.\u201d Google\u2019s AI search overhaul has already drawn criticism for undermining the open web<\/a> by replacing links with AI-generated summaries. In classrooms, the same design replaces the act of searching with the act of receiving an answer, which is the opposite of what education is supposed to teach.<\/p>\n The \ud83d\udc9c of EU tech<\/p>\n The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!<\/p>\n Google told Mashable that Common Sense Media\u2019s testing was \u201cnarrow and ambiguous\u201d and not an effective way to measure product safety. The watchdog tested consumer accounts, not education accounts, but Google confirmed that the AI experience is the same for all users. A German court ruled in April that Google is legally liable for the content of its AI Overviews<\/a>, treating them as Google\u2019s own statements rather than third-party results. If the same logic applies in the US, schools using Google Search may be exposing themselves to liability every time a student receives a hallucinated answer that Google\u2019s design presents as fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TL;DR Common Sense Media rated Google\u2019s AI Search an \u201cunacceptable risk\u201d for students. AI Mode uses age-gated Gemini…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-810309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tnw-newsletter.png\"\/)
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