Designing responsible AI for learning

If you’ve ever watched a student use AI tools to help with their schoolwork, you’ve probably wondered: Are they actually learning, or just finding a shortcut? Questions like this are important, and they guide our work when building products for learning.

We believe technology paired with great educators can unlock incredible learning potential, and we’re focused on building technology responsibly to help students thrive. Today, we’re making important updates to our products used in schools, including building Guided Learning capabilities into Google Search and Google Classroom, and evolving our approach to school controls.

Developing products built for learning

We believe AI products should support “productive struggle” — enabling students to be actively challenged without getting so overwhelmed that they give up. That’s the philosophy behind Guided Learning. In Gemini, Guided Learning acts as an interactive study tool that coaches students through the process of problem solving through open-ended questions and step-by-step breakdowns. Our research shows that Guided Learning leads to measurable learning gains for students, and we’re now bringing Guided Learning to more products.

• Google Search: We’re building Guided Learning capabilities into Search for student accounts to help them work through problems without skipping straight to answers. When our systems understand a student is looking for certain types of homework help, Search will walk them through the topic or problem step by step. For example, if a student pastes a complex physics problem or asks for help writing a book report in Search, they’ll see prompts to help them think critically and work through the concepts, without going directly to the answer. We’re starting with a pilot in select U.S. schools later this month to gather and incorporate educator feedback before expanding to other school districts in the coming months.

Google Classroom: Starting today, Guided Learning is globally available in Google Classroom, a central hub where teachers and students organize schoolwork, share assignments and stay connected. When a student starts a Guided Learning activity assigned by their teacher, it acts like a 1-1 study tool, anchored in class material to help them stay on task. It also gives teachers real-time insights to spot where the class might need extra support.

Before launching Guided Learning in Google Classroom, we worked closely with schools and educators to test the feature and integrate their feedback.

Enhancing school controls

We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach. After listening to schools, teachers, leading researchers, and policymakers, we are now updating our approach to controls for Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.

We’ll share more specifics with schools in the coming months ahead of the changes rolling out so they have time to prepare and enable a smooth transition. Our goal is simple: provide school leaders the control and confidence to use AI products in classrooms as they see fit.

We’ll continue to listen to feedback and evolve our approach as we work in partnership with schools, teachers, pedagogical experts, and parents on helping the next generation learn and thrive.