In a recent blog post, Google announced a major push to enhance learning through artificial intelligence (AI), framed around their “AI for Learning Forum” held in London with partners including Google DeepMind. The company committed US $30 million in new funding over the next three years to support projects aimed at improving access to learning tools, research into effective AI use in education, and partnerships with organisations dedicated to supporting students and teachers globally.
Part of the initiative involves the deployment of Google’s advanced AI model, Gemini, to help learners and educators. For example, Google is collaborating with the Estonian government’s “AI Leap” programme to equip over 20,000 students and teachers with access to Gemini for Education, training, and accompanying research to evaluate outcomes. The blog also highlighted new features on platforms like YouTube — such as conversational tools that let learners ask questions, receive summaries, and be quizzed on video-content — designed to help students stay engaged and overcome learning bottlenecks.
Google emphasises that underpinning all of this is a rigorous research-based approach: the company reported results from a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with 165 UK students ages 13–15, where its “LearnLM” model (embedded within Gemini 2.5) was used for chat-based math tutoring under teacher supervision. The trial found a 5.5 percentage-point improvement in students’ ability to independently solve novel problems, and only 0.1% of the tutoring messages contained factual errors. Additionally, Google plans to run further RCTs across the U.S., India, Sierra Leone and beyond to evaluate how AI-driven learning tools perform in diverse environments.
Finally, the funding and partnerships span organisations aimed at broadening access and literacy: Google announced partnerships with entities such as the Raspberry Pi Foundation (to help students learn coding in an AI-era), Fab AI (for international studies on AI’s impact on learning), and Playlab (to build scalable AI-literacy systems in K-12). Google also supported the non-profit Digital Promise in releasing a “Framework for Powerful Learning with Emerging Technology” to guide educators on how to integrate AI tools effectively.
