The Month New York Drew Lines Around AI

This is a dated roundup: October 2026, written so it can be checked later. In one month, four parts of New York government each drew a line around artificial intelligence, and they drew them in very different places. The schools pulled back. The courts set rules for use. The City Council went after a company. The state paid for training.

Schools: AI switched off in 38-plus products

The city Education Department has disabled or banned student-facing generative AI in more than 38 previously approved classroom products, Chalkbeat reported on October 23, after more than a month of requests for the list.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the restrictions days before the school year started. “We will fully discontinue or disable the AI components of more than 38 previously allowed programs that do not meet our new safety and oversight standards,” he said.

The list is what’s new. According to Chalkbeat:

• Amira, an AI reading tutor used in more than 200 city schools, is banned outright. The department says it can’t work without AI.
• The tutoring platform Coursemojo and Google’s Gemini chatbot are also banned. Officials said Gemini was left off the list because it was already being turned off for students.
• The department’s own “teaching assistant” chatbot, built with Microsoft, was discontinued for students.
• The rules cover student-facing generative AI features, not necessarily whole products. The department is working with companies case by case.

Not everyone trusts the review. “You cannot trust the DOE to independently evaluate and assess these products,” education technology critic Leonie Haimson told Chalkbeat. At least one flagged vendor, the translation tool Wordly, says it doesn’t use generative AI at all.

Courts: use it, but you own every word

The state court system’s AI advisory committee, appointed in 2024 by Chief Administrative Judge Joseph A. Zayas, has issued guidance letting attorneys use generative AI in filings without telling the judge, amNY reported on October 27. In return, lawyers must personally verify everything, including finding, reading and analyzing every citation themselves.

The guidance puts the risk plainly: “The [AI] is designed to generate text that sounds right, not text that is right.”

“AI tools can help enhance efficiency, but they also carry risks that demand caution and informed oversight,” Zayas said. The guidance is the default wherever a judge has no AI rule of their own. A judge’s standing order comes first.

City Council: a subpoena, and testimony under oath

On October 16, Council Speaker Julie Menin and the Committee on Technology, chaired by Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, held a follow-up AI safety hearing on SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s company, according to the Council. It came after the Council’s first subpoena on record against a private actor. SpaceXAI had skipped an earlier Council-wide hearing on October 5 where Anthropic, Google, Meta and OpenAI testified under oath (Council release).

“It took a subpoena and the threat of continued legal action to compel SpaceXAI to show up and testify before New Yorkers today, and yet their testimony was simply unacceptable,” Menin said. “Self-regulation is not enough.”

“It became clear to us that they cannot self-regulate,” De La Rosa said.

Two bills are on the table, per the Council: Intro 504, from Deputy Speaker Dr. Nantasha Williams, would prohibit unauthorized AI-generated images, video or audio of elected officials. Intro 2605, from Menin, would let whistleblowers share in fines recovered from AI companies that break the law.

Albany: $10 million for AI jobs in Long Island City

On October 22, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the AI Jobs Institute, a Queens training hub in Long Island City run by the workforce nonprofit Pursuit. The release puts total public investment at $10 million, including $3.06 million from Empire State Development. Construction starts this winter, with full occupancy expected in mid-2027. The goal is to train up to 40,000 New Yorkers by 2032, focused on people largely left out of the tech economy.

What to watch

• Whether the Education Department publishes its criteria for what counts as “AI,” and which products come back.
• The first New York sanction under the new court guidance.
• Whether Intro 504 and Intro 2605 get committee votes.

Corrections: if anything here is wrong, tell us through the Contact page and we’ll fix it and note the change.