Is your 10-year-old asking ChatGPT to do their homework? Not in New York anymore.

In a move that's being watched right across the US, New York City has just pulled the plug on student-facing AI for everyone up to Year 9.

According to Cbinewstv, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced a one-year moratorium on generative AI in public elementary and middle schools for the 2026-2027 school year. It impacts nearly 600,000 pupils from 2-K through 8th grade in the nation's largest school system.

Only high schoolers — typically 14 and up — will be allowed to use AI, and even then, only in limited pilot programmes, with biannual AI literacy classes thrown in. And those AI companion chatbots designed for emotional support? Banned outright, across all year groups.

Why the U-turn?

City Hall was pretty blunt about it.

“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We do not see it that way,” Mamdani said in a statement.

“Children need teachers and human connection in order to learn and grow. They need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators and wrestle with tough problems on their own,” he added.

Governor Kathy Hochul backed the move, saying: “We have a responsibility to ensure that rapidly-changing technology supports our children and their learning, rather than getting in the way of it.”

Teachers, interestingly, are exempt. They can still use AI for lesson planning and admin — it's the pupil-facing stuff that's being stripped out.

This isn't New York's first AI wobble.

If this feels like déjà vu, that's because it is.

New York City public schools actually imposed a temporary ban on ChatGPT soon after its rollout in 2022. The restriction was later lifted and replaced by a custom AI-powered teaching assistant, as part of a wider embrace by districts desperate to look innovative.

What’s different this time is the scale. Mamdani’s office is calling this the country’s “most expansive” limits around AI use in schools.

It follows a framework published back in March that allowed students to use AI for research, exploration and creative projects. That sparked fury among many parents and teachers who thought it was far too lenient.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels admitted leaders had “missed the mark” in their communications and promised to review the feedback.

The bigger picture

New York is not acting in a vacuum. UNESCO last year urged a minimum age of 13 for generative AI in classrooms, while polls in both the UK and US show more than 60% of parents worry about AI harming critical thinking and mental wellbeing.

The city will also introduce new screen-time limits alongside the AI ban.

A new Technology in Schools Coalition — made up of students, teachers, parents, elected officials and industry experts — will spend the 2026-2027 school year assessing the impact of the moratorium before publishing its findings and recommendations for future years.

So, is this the start of a global pushback? For now, New York is betting that for under-14s, old-school human teaching still beats the algorithm.

Source: cbinews.tv

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