New York City sets one-year generative AI moratorium through eighth grade

New York City's one-year moratorium covers student-facing generative AI software through eighth grade and affects roughly 600,000 public school students. Officials will use the period to study how children use the technology. The policy is temporary rather than a permanent prohibition, and its stated scope is based on grade level and student access, leaving high school programs to a separate set of rules during the same school year.

The city said it will stop classroom use of about 40 educational AI tools under the moratorium. Companion chatbots will face a broader restriction and be barred across every grade level. That distinction means the policy is not a single identical rule for all forms of artificial intelligence: the roughly 40 classroom tools are addressed through the younger-student moratorium, while companion bots are prohibited for students throughout the school system.

High school students are exempt from the full ban. Instead, the city plans to provide AI literacy classes twice each year to all public high school students. It will also start pilot programs in which some high schoolers may use selected AI platforms under teacher supervision. Those programs preserve controlled access for older students while making instruction and adult oversight part of the city's approach to AI use in secondary classrooms.

Teachers will continue to be allowed to use artificial intelligence for their own work. Permitted uses include preparing lessons and handling administrative duties such as scheduling. The student restrictions therefore do not remove the technology from every school function. They draw a boundary between tools presented directly to pupils and tools used by educators to organize instruction or perform administrative tasks during the school year.

The plan also recommends daily screen-time ceilings outside its rules for generative AI. Students in grades three through five would be limited to 30 minutes, while students in grades six through eight would have a 45-minute cap. New York City also plans a systemwide review of education-technology products, with the goal of removing tools judged not essential to learning from its school technology environment.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said children need teachers and human connection to learn and grow. He said students need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with educators and work through difficult problems on their own. The mayor presented those educational priorities as the basis for the city's decision, making them his stated rationale for the restrictions rather than a measured finding about every possible classroom use of generative AI.