Gemini and NotebookLM Enablement for All Education Users—What Admins Need to Know

Gemini and NotebookLM Enablement for All Education Users—What Admins Need to Know

Upcoming Changes to Gemini and NotebookLM

On August 13, 2025, Google will turn on Gemini and NotebookLM at the root OU for all Workspace for Education domains. Both Gemini and NotebookLM are Core Services for Workspace for Education, meaning they will be enabled by default at the root OU, like all other Core Services. Admins may opt out of this change if they wish to manage enabling/disabling these services for users on their own.

Note: as Core Services, Gemini and NotebookLM fall under the same Workspace for Education Terms of Service as other Core Services, such as Drive, Gmail, Classroom, etc. This means that humans do not review data from Education users in Gemini and NotebookLM and will not be used to train any AI models. Additionally, just like other Core Services, user data in Gemini and NotebookLM will not be shared with any third parties or be used for advertising.

In this article, you will learn:  

The timeline for this change

What is changing

CDW's recommendation

How to opt out  

Timeline

June 17, 2025
* Gemini is now available for all Workspace for Education users; previously, only users aged 13 and older were allowed
   to access Gemini per the Workspace for Education Terms of Service.
* Workspace for Education primary admins received an MSA notifying them of this change.
* Admins may opt out of allowing Google to enable Gemini and NotebookLM at the root OU

August 1, 2025
Deadline for opting out of allowing Google to enable Gemini and NotebookLM at the root OU

August 13, 2025
* Google will enable Gemini and NotebookLM at the root OU for domains that:
   * Have not opted out OR
   * Do not already have Gemini and NotebookLM turned on at the root OU
* NotebookLM is now available to all Workspace for Education users; previously, only users aged 18 and older were
   allowed to access NotebookLM per the Workspace for Education Terms of Service and the Age-Based Access setting.

What is Changing

Now that Gemini and NotebookLM are Core Services and are available to Workspace for Education users of all ages, Google will enable these services at the root OU unless administrators opt-out. How this will impact your domain depends on your settings and inheritance. To better understand this change, please see the following example scenarios.

Scenario A

Current configuration:

• Gemini and/or NotebookLM are OFF at the root OU
• One or more OUs have Gemini and/or NotebookLM overridden to ON 

When Google enables these apps at the root OU:

• OUs that were previously overridden to ON will not be modified.
• OUs that inherited the OFF setting for Gemini and/or NotebookLM from the root OU will be turned ON because Google will enable these services at the root OU, and normal policy inheritance will carry this new setting to all OUs that are not overridden.
• End result: all users will have Gemini and/or NotebookLM enabled through overrides and normal policy inheritance

Scenario B

Current configuration:

• Gemini and/or NotebookLM are OFF at the root OU
• One or more OUs have Gemini and/or NotebookLM overridden to ON
• One or more OUs have Gemini and/or NotebookLM overridden to OFF

When Google enables these apps at the root OU:

• OUs that were previously overridden to ON will not be modified.
• OUs that inherited the OFF setting for Gemini and/or NotebookLM from the root OU will be turned ON because Google will enable these services at the root OU, and normal policy inheritance will carry this new setting to all OUs that are not overridden.
• OUs that were previously overridden to OFF will not be modified.
  Any sub-OUs below these OUs will remain off by default due to normal policy inheritance.
  End result: some users will have Gemini and/or NotebookLM enabled through overrides and normal policy inheritance

Scenario C

Current configuration:

• Gemini and/or NotebookLM are ON at the root OU
• One or more sub-OUs have Gemini and/or NotebookLM overridden to OFF 

Because Gemini and/or NotebookLM are already enabled at the root OU, Google will make no changes to any settings for these services.

Recommendation

Admins and school leaders may not want to risk unintended or unexpected activation of generative AI apps for users who should not have access to them. Opting out will not enable or disable any services or change any settings; instead, it will prevent Google from modifying these settings for you on August 13, leaving administrators in control of making these changes. Therefore, we recommend opting out. Please note that this recommendation does not express an opinion on whether these apps are age- or educationally appropriate for all students. Rather, this recommendation is based on the Admin console best practice of putting Workspace for Education admins in control of important setting changes.

How to Opt Out

To opt out of allowing Google to change these settings for you, look for the Discover tile in your Admin console home page and click Opt out.