Last year, the Los Angeles Unified School District set up a fabulous all-encompassing AI chatbot friend to students and teachers, called Ed. Unfortunately, Ed didn’t work. AllHere, the company running Ed, went broke. The founder was arrested for fraud. LAUSD’s scheme for 2025 is to give every kid in Los Angeles an unmanaged iPad and/or Chromebook to do their work in class. Some parents have a few objections. In particular, how their kids are having a lot of trouble studying on a tablet with completely unfiltered access to the Internet without going off to YouTube or other sites in class. LAUSD is not blocking the AI sites on the classroom iPads or Chromebooks either. They would like much greater control and management of screen time, especially in class. [_NBC_] And you’ll be delighted to hear the kids are now being told to use AI in class too! One fourth-grade class in LA was reading the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren. You know the ones. Pippi is usually drawn as a little girl with red hair in long pigtails and she always wears long stripy socks. The class was told to design a book cover for Pippi Longstocking. Not using pencils and paper — no, this is the AI era! So this was an exercise to teach the kids how to prompt an image generator. The kids were using Adobe for Education. This calls itself “the creative resource for K–12 and Higher Education” and it includes the Adobe Express AI image generator. Adobe even has a gallery of kids’ work with Adobe Express! You and I might wonder how on earth prompting an AI slop bot is supposed to teach kids anything. One kid typed in a description of Pippi Longstocking: “long stockings a red headed girl with braids sticking straight out”. What they got back was four pictures of a woman dressed in what looks like schoolgirl fetish or goth nightclub gear. One of them is wearing a leather bikini outfit. But, they all have long red braids. And stockings. Real sexy, boss, just like you asked. [_Bluesky_] So that was _unexpected_ , probably not the result anyone would have wanted, and the kids’ parents weren’t very impressed. Adobe Express is pretty clearly not filtered for school use at all. You’d almost think Adobe tuned its Firefly image generator for maximum engagement. And apparently, that means sexy ladies. I tried this prompt myself in Adobe Express. I told it I was a high school student, K–12, using Adobe Express for schoolwork, and I put in the same prompt the fourth-grade kid did: “long stockings a red headed girl with braids sticking straight out”. I got back four pictures of women who look like they’re in indie rock bands. These Adobe Express images might lead kids to turn into emo brats. I think this is a close enough result that the original Bluesky image post is entirely credible. Adobe Express completely mangled the hands and the braids, ’cos it’s 2023? I guess it’s early days for Express, you can’t expect them to get hands right. Or I was prompting it wrong. The LAUSD Guidelines for the Authorized Use of Artificial Intelligence say: [_LAUSD_ _, PDF_ _archive_] > In accordance with the District’s Responsible Use Policy, students under the age of 13 are not permitted to use generative AI tools. That rule’s just being flat-out ignored. The schools are blaming the parents for not opting out. The parents are blaming the schools for not giving them an opt-out, if they even told them. The administrators are blaming the teachers for not restricting how the kids use the unfiltered iPads. The software vendors are blaming the schools for not setting up proper blocking. The vendor has its tools, and the kids _will_ use them. Edtech job number one: keep paying the vendors. We’re preparing your kid for the glorious AI future. That is, a life of getting nickel-and-dimed by corporate parasites feeding off public money. * _Video_ _—_ _Podcast_ ### Share this post: * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_

I’ve been a teacher for over 20 years, but I’ll be honest—the last few have been some of my most rewarding. Since 2020, I’ve found myself part of a community of creative educators that has turned out to be the best professional development of my entire career. If you’ve ever walked into a room and thought, “Ah. These are my people,”