Google is trying to get college students hooked on AI with a free year of Gemini Advanced

Under no circumstances should you let AI do your schoolwork for you, but Google has decided to make that option a little bit easier for the next year. The company is offering a free year of it's Google One AI Premium plan, which includes Gemini Advanced, access to the AI assistant in the Google Workspace and things like Gemini Live, to any college student willing to sign up.

The offer gives you a sample platter of Google's latest AI features, which normally costs $20 per month, and is primarily focused on things you can do with Gemini. That includes experimental products like NotebookLM for analyzing documents, and Whisk for remixing images and videos. Because this is a Google One plan, you'll also get 2TB of Google Drive storage for the parade of PDFs that make up college life.

You can sign-up for the free offer on Google's website. You need to be 18 years or older, have a ".edu" email address and join before June 30, 2025, but once you do, you'll have the Google One AI Premium plan through July 2026. Google says you'll need to verify you're still a student in 2026, but otherwise, the whole thing is a light lift. Even if you don't care about AI, signing up is worth it for the free extra storage.

Google's intentions here obviously aren't pure. Free storage is nice, but If the company can normalize using AI for a generation of young minds, it can change what's an occasionally useful novelty into an essential. That's not likely to be good for critical thinking or test scores, even if it justifies the money the company is spending on AI research and development.

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