Google AI Search sparks school safety alarm

Common Sense Media has rated Google’s AI Search an “unacceptable risk” for students, urging minors to stop using it until schools get a way to turn off the AI features without shutting down Search altogether.

The watchdog said AI Mode readily completed homework for young users, repeated misinformation with unwarranted confidence, and exposed children to generative AI experiences powered by Gemini models that are age-gated everywhere else in Google’s products. According to the report, the issue is built into the product: when Google launched AI Mode for Search last year, it made the feature available to everyone immediately, including education accounts.

Right now, Google offers no toggle to disable AI features while keeping Search available. Parents can block Google.com entirely for child accounts, and school administrators could do the same for Workspace for Education users. But that creates an obvious problem in classrooms.

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Google remains deeply embedded in schools. It led the 1:1 device movement that brought Chromebooks into classrooms across the US and now serves millions of Workspace for Education users from kindergarten through postgraduate education.

“Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode are undermining kids' education, supplying them with dangerous disinformation, and putting their very lives at risk. If Google is not even willing to disable AI features for students, schools should stop using Google products altogether.”

Google’s broader search overhaul has already faced criticism for replacing links with AI-generated summaries. In education, that shift changes searching from a process of finding and evaluating sources into simply receiving an answer.

Google told Mashable that Common Sense Media’s testing was “narrow and ambiguous” and not an effective way to assess product safety. The watchdog tested consumer accounts, not education accounts, but Google confirmed that the AI experience is the same for all users.

The legal pressure is growing too. In April, a German court ruled that Google is legally liable for the content of its AI Overviews, treating them as Google’s own statements rather than third-party results. If that reasoning carries over to the US, schools using Google Search could face liability when students are shown hallucinated answers presented as fact.