Two weeks ago, an IT administrator for an elementary-middle school took to Google’s support forums requesting a way to block students from seeing AI Overviews—the chatbot-generated answers at the top of search results.
“This seems counterproductive to what we're trying to teach,” the administrator wrote. “Students need opportunities to navigate search results, examine sources, and draw their own conclusions rather than being handed an AI-generated synthesis before they've even started.”
No one from Google responded to the concern, which has been bubbling up for years. But counterparts from three districts voiced similar frustration and pointed to workarounds they were employing or considering to block AI Overviews in lieu of an official “off” switch. Their expertise is about to be in demand.
Google announced on Tuesday that it is declining to provide schools an option to disable AI Overviews. Instead, starting next year, schools will have to block access to search altogether to get rid of the feature. The decision has stunned educators, parents, and technology researchers across the US.
“We were flabbergasted,” says Dominique Johnson, part of an Oregon community group called Lake Oswego Parents For Responsible Technology. “This move makes things even more difficult for school districts that have determined AI is harmful to foundational learning.”
Google didn’t respond to a request for comment. But in a public response to the controversy shared on X, the company contended that schools will now have “more choice, not less” because search, its Gemini chatbot, and Gemini Notebook tool will be off by default starting next year. Administrators can enable one, two, or all three services.
The issue for schools and parents, though, is that Google considers AI Overviews and a companion feature called AI Mode inseparable from the traditional search experience. Respectively launched in 2023 and last year, they bring the functionality of AI chatbots, such as Gemini or ChatGPT, directly into search results.
“Kids are already using these search-bar summaries to skip real effort, pulling instant math answers and letting AI write their essays,” Johnson says. “To make matters worse, these AI snapshots frequently make mistakes and output false facts, which younger students take as absolute truth.”
The AI-generated responses are tempting to read and often good enough to trust, triggering headaches beyond classrooms. Wikipedia, news websites, and education tools have lost human visitors as people rely on overviews. Google uses the same bots to crawl the web for its search and AI products, making it impossible for publishers to opt out of their content being used for the latter.
Google’s push to make AI Overviews a prominent part of search has already come at a cost. Last week, shares of parent company Alphabet suffered their worst single-day selloff, erasing half a trillion dollars in market value after the company reported weaker-than-expected search ad sales. A big cause? Increased usage of AI Overviews and AI Mode, which aren’t packed with many ads yet—although some experts believe the slump will only be temporary.
For schools, the dilemma over search may be just beginning. While several districts WIRED contacted didn’t respond to requests for comment, Los Angeles Unified says it is still reviewing the potential implications of Google’s announcement. Some education technology experts argue that schools should abandon Google search altogether, or at least do a better job teaching students to question the validity of AI answers.
“Under-resourced districts will grit their teeth and say, ‘we don’t have the capacity to dig in our heels and not use Google,’” says Stephen Aguilar, who coleads University of Southern California’s Center for Generative AI and Society. “A lot are likely going to accelerate plans they already have to teach students about this new digital literacy.”
Parent advocates also plan to push districts to look elsewhere. “This move just continues a well-established pattern of big tech companies pushing products into classrooms,” says Karolle Rabarison, a policy and communications strategist who helps lead Schools Beyond Screens in Washington, DC. “It’s not going to work any more.”
“Ludicrous” Refusal
Tech industry veterans disagree about how difficult it would be for Google to let schools disable AI Overviews without affecting the rest of Search. “It’s a question of whether they’re committed to maintaining two versions of search in the long run,” says Nicole Kerson, a former senior Google Search product manager who runs the AI strategy firm Collected Company. “It's very hard to maintain a forked product like that.”
Microsoft offers a Google Chrome extension that lets users turn off AI-generated summaries in Bing search. Adeel Khan, a former teacher and principal who now runs MagicSchool, which provides AI chatbots for students and teachers, says it is “infuriating, insulting, and ludicrous” that Google isn’t doing something similar.
Without an official way to disable AI Overviews, schools have turned to technical workarounds, including modifying search URLs and adopting browser extensions that change how Google results appear. Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia recently developed its own extension. But these loopholes could stop functioning if Google changes how its search results are delivered.
Smaller search engines, such as the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, see an opportunity to win business from schools frustrated with Google. “I wouldn't expect to see a Google-style ‘DuckDuckGo Classroom’ anytime soon, but ideally, we'll have special resources just for educators looking to make a switch,” says spokesperson Allison Goodman.
Following a federal ruling in 2024 that Google illegally maintained its search monopoly, the company was ordered to share certain search data and services with rivals and loosen restrictions on how its products are distributed. But the effort is well behind schedule, thanks to ongoing legal disputes slowing the independent committee meant to oversee the remedies. The AI Overviews issue could prompt fresh scrutiny as several lawmakers, including US Senator Bernie Sanders, criticized Google’s stance toward schools.
Research and Debate
Studies examining the effects of the new AI tools entering schools have raised concerns about whether they are eroding opportunities for students to develop skills such as critical thinking, according to a Stanford review of the research as of a year ago. According to a survey conducted by Google itself, three in four teenagers report using AI weekly, but only about half say they double check its outputs for accuracy. A recent study by Washington University in St. Louis, meanwhile, found that only about 42 percent of AI Overviews could be fully verified using the citations they contained. Google has said overviews undergo rigorous testing and are continually improving.
In its response to the recent furor over AI Overviews, Google said it plans to launch a new feature for students in the coming months called Guided Learning. The idea is to coach users to find information rather than provide them with an immediate answer. “We believe AI products should support ‘productive struggle’—enabling students to be actively challenged without getting so overwhelmed that they give up,” Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president for education wrote in the company’s Tuesday blog post.
Some researchers are already questioning how effective Guided Learning will be, arguing it won’t be as natural as working with a human tutor. Aguilar views Guided Learning as another attempt by Google to maintain the position it already occupies in American classrooms, where Google-powered Chromebook laptops, Google Classroom learning software, Search, and YouTube are commonplace.
“There’s a kernel of truth in saying we have to prepare students for a world where AI is ubiquitous,” Aguilar says, “but it shouldn’t be through a company making a very self-serving pronouncement because it’s heavily invested in AI.”
