Microsoft Concedes on Student Data After Union Pressure

Microsoft has reached an agreement with two prominent US teachers' unions to bar the use of student and teacher data for training its AI models. The pact follows recent moves by New York City public schools to curb classroom AI, establishing new safeguards that forbid student tracking, targeted advertising, and high-risk automated decision-making without human oversight.

The framework, established alongside the American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers, will take effect as the National AI Safety and Privacy Standard. It introduces ten mandatory digital protections tailored to public school systems, including a ban on the commercial sale or promotional use of pupil records, restrictions on surplus data collection, and requirements for straightforward explanations detailing the function of classroom tools.

The arrangement arrives amidst escalating local restrictions across major American school systems. New York City authorities instituted a one-year moratorium on AI tools for approximately 600,000 public school students enrolled up to the eighth grade in September. Los Angeles has enacted even broader barriers, barring public school students across all grades from using generative AI tools on district-issued hardware during the current school year.