India is teaching Google how AI in education can scale

As AI races into classrooms worldwide, Google is uncovering that the toughest lessons connected however the tech tin really standard are emerging not from Silicon Valley, but from India’s schools.

India has go a proving crushed for Google’s acquisition AI amid intensifying contention from rivals, including OpenAI and Microsoft. With more than a cardinal net users, the state present accounts for the highest planetary usage of Gemini for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and wide manager for education, wrong an acquisition strategy shaped by state-level curricula, beardown authorities involvement, and uneven entree to devices and connectivity.

Phillips was speaking connected the sidelines of Google’s AI for Learning Forum successful New Delhi this week, wherever helium met with manufacture stakeholders, including K-12 schoolhouse administrators and acquisition officials, to stitchery feedback connected however AI tools are being utilized successful classrooms.

The standard of India’s acquisition strategy helps explicate wherefore the state has go specified a consequential investigating ground. The country’s schoolhouse acquisition strategy serves astir 247 cardinal students crossed astir 1.47 cardinal schools, per the Indian government’s Economic Survey 2025–26, supported by 10.1 cardinal teachers. Its higher acquisition strategy is among the world’s largest arsenic well, with more than 43 cardinal students enrolled successful 2021–22 — a 26.5% summation from 2014–15 — complicating efforts to present AI tools crossed systems that are vast, decentralized, and unevenly resourced.

One of the clearest lessons for Google has been that AI successful acquisition cannot beryllium rolled retired arsenic a single, centrally defined product. In India, wherever program decisions beryllium astatine the authorities level and ministries play an progressive role, Phillips said Google has had to plan its acquisition AI truthful that schools and administrators — not the institution — determine however and wherever it is used. That marks a displacement for Google, which, similar astir Silicon Valley firms, has traditionally built products to standard globally alternatively than bending to the preferences of idiosyncratic institutions.

“We are not delivering a one-size-fits-all,” Phillips told TechCrunch. “It’s a precise divers situation astir the world.”

Beyond governance, that diverseness is besides reshaping however Google thinks astir AI-driven learning itself. The institution is seeing faster adoption of multimodal learning successful India, said Phillips, combining video, audio, and images alongside substance — reflecting the request to scope students crossed antithetic languages, learning styles, and levels of access, peculiarly successful classrooms that are not built astir text-heavy instruction.

Maintaining the teacher-student relationship

A related displacement has been Google’s determination to plan its AI for acquisition astir teachers, alternatively than students, arsenic the superior constituent of control. The institution has focused connected tools that assistance educators with planning, assessment, and schoolroom management, Phillips noted, alternatively than bypassing them with direct-to-student AI experiences.

“The teacher-student narration is critical,” helium said. “We’re present to assistance that turn and flourish, not regenerate it.”

In parts of India, AI successful acquisition is being introduced successful classrooms that person ne'er had 1 instrumentality per pupil oregon reliable net access. Google is encountering schools wherever devices are shared, connectivity is inconsistent, oregon learning jumps straight from pen and insubstantial to AI tools, Phillips said.

“Access is universally critical, but however and erstwhile it happens is precise different,” helium added, pointing to environments wherever schools trust connected shared oregon teacher-led devices alternatively than one-to-one access.

Meanwhile, Google is translating its aboriginal learnings from India into deployments, including AI-powered JEE Main preparation done Gemini, a nationwide teacher grooming programme covering 40,000 Kendriya Vidyalaya educators, and partnerships with authorities institutions connected vocational and higher education, including India’s archetypal AI-enabled authorities university.

Gemini adds JEE Main mentation for Indian Engineering aspirantsImage Credits:Google

For Google, India’s acquisition is serving arsenic a preview of challenges apt to aboveground elsewhere arsenic AI moves deeper into nationalist acquisition systems. The institution expects issues astir control, access, and localisation — present evident successful India — to progressively signifier however AI successful acquisition scales globally.

From amusement to learning arsenic the apical AI usage case

Google’s propulsion besides reflects a broader displacement successful however radical are utilizing GenAI. Entertainment had dominated AI usage cases past year, said Phillips, who added that learning has present emerged arsenic 1 of the astir communal ways radical prosecute with the technology, peculiarly among younger users. As students progressively crook to AI for studying, exam preparation, and skill-building, acquisition has go a much contiguous — and consequential — arena for Google.

India’s analyzable acquisition strategy is besides drafting expanding attraction from Google’s rivals. OpenAI has begun gathering a section enactment beingness focused connected education, hiring former Coursera APAC managing manager Raghav Gupta arsenic its India and APAC acquisition caput and launching a Learning Accelerator program past year. Microsoft, meanwhile, has expanded partnerships with Indian institutions, authorities bodies, and edtech players, including Physics Wallah, to enactment AI-based learning and teacher training, highlighting however acquisition is becoming a cardinal battleground arsenic AI companies question to embed their tools into nationalist systems.

At the aforesaid time, India’s latest Economic Survey flags risks to students from uncritical AI use, including over-reliance connected automated tools and imaginable impacts connected learning outcomes. Citing studies by MIT and Microsoft, the survey noted that “dependence connected AI for originative enactment and penning tasks is contributing to cognitive atrophy and a deterioration of captious reasoning capabilities.” This serves arsenic a reminder that the contention to participate classrooms is unfolding amid increasing concerns implicit however AI shapes learning itself.

Whether Google’s India playbook becomes a exemplary for AI successful acquisition elsewhere remains an unfastened question. However, arsenic GenAI moves deeper into nationalist acquisition systems, the pressures present disposable successful India are apt to aboveground successful different countries arsenic well, making the lessons Google is learning determination hard for the manufacture to ignore.