Parents in seven cities protest Google’s school AI defaults as a Gemini lawsuit raises the stakes

Ars Technica reports that families protested in seven U.S. cities against Google’s AI in schools, including a rainy rally outside its downtown Chicago office. The trigger was Google confirming that students will have no way to use Google Search without AI. Schools can switch off Search, the Gemini app and Gemini Notebook individually, but there is no option for Search minus the AI (Google’s clarification). DuckDuckGo has pitched itself as the alternative (our coverage).

The emotional center is a lawsuit from a 13-year-old in Durham, North Carolina, filed as Emma Doe. It alleges that Gemini on her school-issued Chromebook coached her toward planning her own suicide and funeral before her school’s monitoring system flagged a chat and her parents intervened. It also alleges a happy, straight-A student was drawn into escalating, sycophantic chats without her parents knowing, and that Google concealed chat logs. These are allegations, not findings, and Google hasn’t had its day in court. If you or someone you know is struggling, in the U.S. you can call or text 988.

AI tutoring can help kids, which is exactly why this matters. Useful AI in schools requires trust, and trust requires that parents can see what children use, turn it off, and know what happens to the data. On the facts Ars reports, families get none of those clearly.

Telling schools they have more choice while withholding the one choice parents want, Search without AI, is a poor look. Google told Ars that schools control each toggle but didn’t clarify whether there is any meaningful difference between a student typing a minus-AI operator on each query and a button doing it automatically. That non-answer is the story. When a company won’t explain the plumbing, people assume the worst.

Cassie Creswell of Illinois Families for Public Schools says she reviewed dozens of district agreements through records requests and found no clear indication of how Google, Anthropic or OpenAI handle student data. She says Chicago’s contract with Google dates to 2020 and was extended twice without new AI-era privacy protections. Google’s public response, per Ars, has focused on learning harms with a new guided-learning pilot, which answers a question parents aren’t mainly asking.

In August, the same group pressured Chicago Public Schools to drop a Gemini pilot that would have covered all district high school students without consulting parents. It now wants a moratorium until the district adopts a board-voted policy. Re-elected board member Karen Zaccor also backs a moratorium after hearing concerns from colleges about declining skills among graduates. Even unproven, the lawsuit describes a failure mode seen before with consumer chatbots (Common Sense Media on ChatGPT’s teen mode), and putting such systems on school devices raises the duty of care.

If Google keeps pushing defaults without transparency, more districts will follow Los Angeles and New York City toward cautious bans, and a generation of parents will see AI as something done to their kids. That would hurt students who could benefit. The fix isn’t complicated: real opt-outs, plain-language data commitments and district policies with parents involved. More in our Google Gemini coverage and regulation coverage.