New York City is set to bar student-facing AI tools through eighth grade

Chalkbeat, citing Education Department documents and four people briefed on the plans, reports that the largest school system in the country will bar generative AI — chatbots and AI tutors — for students from pre-K through eighth grade. Individual devices are out before third grade; screen time on individual devices is capped at 30 minutes in grades 3 to 5 and 45 minutes in middle school. High schoolers get restricted access plus five pilots. Teachers may use approved tools for lesson planning, translation and drafting, but not for grading, behavior monitoring, counseling or special-education plans.

What it means Anyone building or selling a learning product now has to say which side of a grade-level line it sits on, and the biggest district in the country just drew one.