Google announced that it will be making its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Gemini available to teen students soon, on Monday. So far, Gemini was only available to users above the age of 18. With this move, the tech giant is now letting students access the AI capability of its in-house large language model (LLM). The company said that the feature will be rolled out to students in more than 100 countries in the coming months. Gemini chatbot for students will also come with several guardrails to protect them from harmful content.
Gemini AI for teen students features
In a blog post, Google highlighted that it released a responsible Gemini experience for teenagers using their personal Google accounts. The company claimed it consulted child safety and development experts to ensure that the chatbot was safe for underage users.
Building up on that, Google said that Gemini will be available to teen students in the coming months. The students will have to meet the minimum age requirements set by Google. These features will be available via Google Workspace for Education accounts which is only available to education institutions that have qualified its basic eligibility criteria. Students will be able to access Gemini free of charge when using their Education account. Gemini will be available only in English for these users.
The company stated that it is also taking multiple steps to ensure the AI chatbot is safe to use and can act in an assistive role for students. The first in the list is enhanced admin controls. Teenagers will only be able to use Gemini after admins turn it on using the Admin console. It will remain off by default.
In India and the US, Gemini AI will be available to students above the age of 13 who are enrolled in an institution that has access to Google Workspace for Education. Other countries can check the minimum age requirement here.
Coming to features, Google said Gemini has been tuned to filter out content that might be inappropriate for teen students. This version of the chatbot will also come with guardrails to prevent inappropriate responses from appearing. A new onboarding experience including an AI Literacy video has also been added to help students understand Gemini, its purpose, and what to use it for. You can check the video below.
Further, a Learning Coach feature is also being added. It is a custom version of Gemini which is powered by LearnLM. This feature will assist teen students study in a step-by-step manner, offer practice activities, and help students find solutions using their own thinking ability.
In addition, the tech giant announced the release of Read Along in Google Classroom. The feature is designed to help students build reading skills and offer real-time support. This will allow educators to assign reading activities to students based on grade level or phonic skills and then check insights into their reading ability later. The feature is being launched globally in English. The company also plans to introduce Google Vids, a video creation platform, to Google Workspace Education Plus accounts later this year. To begin with, this feature will be available without AI, however, the AI version can be accessed with a Gemini for Google Workspace add-on.
