On the Media How AI Chatbots are Infiltrating Classrooms
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Aug 26, 2026 
Jessica Winter, staff writer at The New Yorker who covers family and education, discusses how Chromebooks arrived in classrooms with built‑in AI and unremovable prompts. She traces Google’s strategy of school device rollouts, explains corporate marketing in class, and outlines research concerns about cognitive and social risks from classroom AI use.
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Chromebook Came With Gemini Preinstalled
- Jessica Winter's daughter brought home a new Chromebook preinstalled with Google Gemini AI that repeatedly prompted help in apps.
- Jessica couldn't disable Gemini without admin rights, so her daughter kept dismissing persistent AI prompts in schoolwork.
AI Turned A Kid Slideshow Into A Professional Product
- Jessica ran her daughter's fifth-grade slideshow through Gemini and it produced a polished, professional version that outshone the original.
- The AI result looked historically correct and visually perfect, but it removed the student's creative and learning process.
Chromebooks Created A Built In Audience For AI
- Jessica traces the problem to Chromebooks becoming ubiquitous through Google's early school push, creating a captive audience for AI tools.
- Google framed Chromebooks as replacing memorization with instant internet access, setting the stage for integrated AI like Gemini.