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Anthropic, one of the world鈥檚 most prominent artificial intelligence companies, is launching a version of its AI-powered assistant Claude for teachers, entering a race by technology companies to infuse AI into education.

Anthropic boasts that its product can incorporate academic standards from all 50 states, and teachers can use it to help devise lesson plans, personalize instructional materials to students, and harness data to improve instruction, according to a company news release.

Claude for Teachers joins Google, OpenAI, and Khan Academy 鈥� among others 鈥� in marketing AI products specifically to K-12 educators. The new product launched Tuesday and is available for free for verified educators in the U.S. It will also be piloted in Detroit Public Schools Community District for a study on educator well-being and practice.

Claude鈥檚 formal arrival into the classroom comes during a complicated moment at the intersection of technology and education. The , the , and have all encouraged educators to adopt AI. But a is simultaneously gaining momentum, prompting some of the nation鈥檚 largest school districts to rethink how much time students spend in front of screens, as well as the contracts they鈥檝e signed with huge players in ed tech.

Drew Bent, education lead for Anthropic, said that teachers using Claude鈥檚 educator product could, for example, pull in a student鈥檚 past assessment data and assignment data, along with past lesson plans, and ask Claude to build lesson plans for individual students based on that data 鈥� all while they鈥檙e sleeping.

In developing Claude for Teachers, Bent said Anthropic staff often heard that while teachers are already using AI to generate lesson plans, the plans generated were often detached from the content teachers actually needed to address. Anthropic鈥檚 tool will help teachers save time and toil less to improve student outcomes, he said.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of evidence of what works well for teachers in terms of aligning with high-quality instructional materials, formative assessments, differentiated instruction,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut of course, if you have 30 students in your class, you鈥檙e not able to do all of that.鈥�

Bent said Detroit was already using other Claude products, and in a 鈥渉uman-centric鈥� way that impressed Anthropic, leading to the pilot program in the district that will start next school year. Anthropic will train teachers at a handful of schools in Claude for Teachers, and evaluate how the product may shape teaching practices in the district.

While AI companies have been eager to cement the technology鈥檚 status as a classroom staple, tech giants likely have a long way to go to quiet skeptics. Student-facing AI and so-called cognitive offloading, a reference to the reliance on AI to complete tasks instead of using critical thinking skills.

Bent emphasized that Anthropic is focusing largely on teachers, and that most K-12 students can鈥檛 access the company鈥檚 Claude assistant, due to an age restriction for anyone under 18.

Daniel Buck, a research fellow at the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute, argued that if teachers outsource work to AI, 鈥渄on鈥檛 be surprised when classroom community and academic outcomes rapidly deteriorate.鈥�

Skeptics have also raised questions about student privacy in using AI, such as Claude.

Anthropic is working with the American Federation for Teachers on aligning the product鈥檚 privacy practices with what the labor union has said will become a 鈥済old standard鈥� in best practices around safety, according to the news release.

Among the privacy features in Claude for Teachers: It won鈥檛 use conversations between the AI assistant and teacher accounts to train its AI, student information will be protected in a manner built to comply with the federal law governing student privacy, and privacy terms of service are written without jargon so teachers can understand what they鈥檙e signing up to use.

鈥淚t鈥檚 important that Anthropic is committing to these principles in their new Claude for Teachers 鈥� a tool designed by and for educators to assist them instructionally and hopefully give them more time for the human relationships at the heart of learning,鈥� wrote AFT President Randi Weingarten in the company鈥檚 press release.

Weingarten has been walking a tightrope when it comes to AI. She鈥檚 in elementary grades while promoting teacher training in the technology. Just a day before calling for the ban, she , an AI chatbot from Khan Academy, in action.

While AFT is working with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic on privacy standards and AI training for educators, it is notably not working with Google, .

Utah鈥檚 state education board recently made a deal with the tech giant , promising personalized instruction tools for educators.

It鈥檚 not yet clear whether one AI product reigns supreme in schools, but more teachers overall are using AI. Around 61% of teachers , compared with 32% in 2024.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .听

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