Teens and AI Companions: Common Sense Media Findings

In this episode of ChatEDU (Guardrails or Surveillance? The Great Summer Gemini Debate), Matt and Liz kick things off with a peek into robot-filled Austin, Texas. Think driverless Jaguars and winking food-delivery cubes. They also share a few updates from their trip to AESA’s summer conference. From there, they dive into three major stories shaping the fast-moving intersection of AI and education.

Story #1: The Rundown Returns

There’s no summer slowdown here. From Turnitin’s big pivot with its Clarity platform to Harvard Business School’s AI tutors and a Common Sense Media study on teen AI companions, Matt and Liz work through a packed list. Along the way, they demo NotebookLM’s new interactive features, revisit the Kittle voice agent, and highlight a troubling move by Elon Musk’s Grok: anime bots and vulgar red pandas designed to keep kids engaged and perhaps manipulated.

Story #2: Beyond the Bot

This week’s Beyond the Bot segment features student-driven innovation from Kenya to New Zealand. First up, a recap of the Africa AI Literacy Week Hackathon, where university students tackled agricultural challenges with custom bots, crop-prediction models, and offline tools. Then Matt and Liz spotlight the InSpirit AI Scholars Program, a standout opportunity for high school students to build real-world AI skills through guided mentorship from top-tier grad students.

Story #3 (Beneath the Surface): Guardrails or Surveillance?

It’s the summer’s hottest debate: Should student AI chats be monitored or private? Matt and Liz break down reactions to Google’s Gemini launch, which skipped the teacher dashboards favored by MagicSchool, SchoolAI, and Brisk. On one side: concerns about safety, transparency, and accountability. On the other: powerful arguments about student agency, trust, and AI literacy. This story puts competing philosophies head to head and asks what kind of AI education we really want.

Bright Byte

This week’s Bright Byte highlights a peer-reviewed study showing how AI is helping hotels and restaurants slash food waste. Using computer vision and deep learning, AI-powered tracking devices identified where food was being lost.

Links and References:

Turnitin Clarity press release-

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/turnitin-delivers-turnitin-clarity-to-bring-transparency-and-responsible-ai-to-the-writing-process-supporting-academic-integrity-in-education-302504889.html

Harvard Business Publishing: AI tutors in accounting

https://hbsp.harvard.edu/inspiring-minds/ai-tutor-bots-harvard-business-school

Common Sense Media: AI Companions Report-

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/health/teens-ai-companion-wellness

InSpirit AI Scholars Program-

https://www.inspiritai.com/

Africa AI Literacy Week Hackathon (Ish Kenya)-

https://tech-ish.com/2025/07/03/ai-africa-agri-tech-sector/

Bright Byte-

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956053X25001072

Announcements

The Skills21 Student AI Literacy Course will be available for the fall.

To learn more or bring it to your school, email Matt and Liz at chatedu@edadvance.org

Sponsor

This episode is supported in part by the National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing, helping students and educators build workforce-ready skills through innovation.

https://www.nextgenmfg.org/