rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/letter/cps-stop-google-gemini-rollout-for-students?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-letter-area-cps-stop-google-gemini-rollout-for-students' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> Illinois Families for Public Schools https://actionnetwork.org/groups/illinois-families-for-public-schools https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/letters/photos/000/455/260/normal/nogeminirollout.png According to the Chicago Public Schools' AI Guidebook, the district plans to provide access for all high school students to Google Gemini for the new 2026-2027 school year. Use this letter-writing tool to urge the CEO-Superintendent, Chief Education Officer and Chief Operating Officer to pause this rollout, and will also send an email to the general Board of Education email. More background on why to ask for this pause below. You can also write directly to your own Chicago Board of Education member and ask them to weigh in. Find your Board member here, and their email address here. Google Gemini is a general-purpose AI model-agent like OpenAI's chatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, which can generate text, and potentially images, audio and video. (Note: Google uses "Gemini" to refer to both the underlying statistical model, but also the generative artificial intelligence applications that use the Gemini model.) All CPS high school students have access to a Google Workspace for Education account, which they can log into via a school-owned computer or a non-school-issued device. Those accounts provide access to many Google products, including email, spreadsheets, word processing, and others. CPS now plans to give high school students access in their Google accounts to Gemini. Teachers have already had access to Google Gemini in their CPS accounts prior to this school year, but, according to another CPS document (“CPS AI Access Overview” p. 2), only some students in pilot programs have had access to Gemini via their CPS-issued Google accounts. The use of general-purpose genAI products, like Google Gemini, in 9-12th grade education is highly controversial. Studies have shown that genAI software products have a negative impact not just on children but also adults’ cognitive development and functioning and emotional and mental health. Google’s own documentation for how students might use Gemini includes asking Gemini to solve homework problems and do research for writing a paper. In fact, CPS’s guidance document for CPS teachers, the Instructional GenAI Playbook, created by the CPS Department of Information and Technology Services, itself says: “Student Generative AI use is perhaps the most critical and least standardized aspect of instructional generative AI currently. The cognitive and socioemotional risks associated with generative AI use by students are rightfully concerning, and the popular generative AI companies (Google - Gemini, Anthropic - Claude, OpenAI - ChatGPT) have yet to establish guardrails in their products that sufficiently meet the rigorous expectations held by CPS for student safety and equitable use. As such, students do not currently have direct access to generative AI at school.” (p.19) The CPS AI Guidebook (Version 6.0) says: “A risk of GenAI tools is cognitive and/or social-emotional over-reliance. CPS encourages students to use these tools with awareness and intention so that they benefit from their capabilities while protecting themselves from these risks.” (p. 20) Guidance that instructs students to “protect themselves from risk” is fundamentally inadequate and should catalyze district employees to rethink the plan to deploy this product. In addition to the educational risks of Google Gemini, there are unaddressed privacy risks. CPS says that Gemini will not train on the data it is provided from CPS accounts, but Google’s own documentation about the Gemini Notebook application says otherwise. The CPS Ed Tech Catalog provides no data sharing agreements for Google products. It is not clear whether Google trains its products on so-called "de-identified" student data. Legal restrictions on companies using de-identified student data for commercial purposes are weak, and de-identification and anonymization of personal data are technically dubious. In addition to the pedagogical and privacy impact of expanding Gemini use to students, there are also well-documented harms from the environmental impact of generative AI, the damage to creative artists of all kinds, and the exploitation of human labor. Related: Illinois Families for Public Schools is asking all Chicago Board of Education candidates to endorse a Pledge to Protect Human-Centered Education, one component of which calls for a three-year moratorium on generative AI use in CPS. See the Pledge explainer for more background on why CPS should hit pause on all generative AI technology, including Google Gemini, until we have district policy that clearly addresses the risks and harm of these products. Questions? Reach out: info@ilfps.org https://actionnetwork.org/letters/cps-stop-google-gemini-rollout-for-students