Not in my family

You have decided you do not want AI in your family, and this page starts from that decision rather than arguing with it. Declining a technology is an ordinary thing for a household to do. Families have made that call about television, about phones at the table, about social media before a certain age, about video games, about photographs of their children being posted online. None of those decisions required a technical case.

The reasons vary and they do not need ranking. Some families decline on religious grounds. Some hold a view about attention, or craft, or what a child should have to work through unaided. Some object to how these systems were built, or to the companies behind them. Some have no argument at all beyond not wanting it, and that is enough on its own. A parent is entitled to set the terms of their own home.

So nothing on this page is trying to move you. The rest of it is practical, because a decision like this one is easier to state than to carry out — not because it is wrong, but because parts of it depend on people outside your house. What follows is about making your boundary real, and holding it in the places where other people are involved.

Keeping chatbots out of your house is genuinely doable, and it is what most families mean when they say no. Do not install the apps. Do not open the accounts. Say plainly that this is not something your family uses, the way you would about anything else you have decided against. On a child’s phone or tablet, assistant apps can be removed, the built-in voice assistant can be switched off, and most devices have a setting that stops anything new being installed without your approval.

That covers the deliberate uses: the writing assistant, the image generator, the homework helper, the companion app. It is a real boundary and it holds inside your own home.

The harder part is that much of this is not a product anyone chooses. It is a component inside things you already use. Search results are ranked and summarized by it. Your photo app groups faces with it. Your spam filter catches scams with it. Autocorrect and predictive text run on it, and so do translation, voice dictation, video captions, recommendations, and the check your bank runs on a card payment before it goes through.

None of that arrives with a label, and switching all of it off is not a realistic project. This is here because you need to know what the decision actually covers, not as an argument that the decision is pointless. Knowing where the line really falls is what lets you draw it somewhere you can hold.

Most families who decide this land on a boundary about intent rather than about technology: nothing in this family writes, draws, or thinks in place of a person. That is a line a child can understand and repeat, and it does not collapse the first time somebody points out that the spam filter uses AI too.

Send the questions by email rather than raising them at the classroom door, and keep the reply. This is not about building a case. It is that staff change, policies change mid-year, and a short written exchange means you are not starting from nothing six months from now. One paragraph is enough, and a friendly one works better than a formal one.

You do not have to explain why. A parent can ask what software their child is being asked to use, and what happens to their child’s work, without giving a reason for asking — the same way you would ask about a school trip or a change of textbook. If somebody asks anyway, “it is a decision we have made as a family” is a complete answer and needs nothing after it.

Expect a range of responses. Some schools have thought this through carefully and will tell you exactly what they use. Others are working it out as they go and may not know yet. Neither reaction tells you much about the school, because this is new for them too. What you are looking for is whether the answer is specific, and whether somebody comes back to you.

Some of this has no answer yet, and it would be dishonest to close without saying so. Whether opting out stays as practical as it is now depends on decisions made by schools, employers and device makers rather than by you. If a school makes a tool genuinely required for a piece of work that is assessed, you are choosing between the boundary and the result, and that is a harder position than the one you are in today. Some families hold the line and accept the cost. Some hold it at home and move it for schoolwork. Some move their child. No version of that trade is free.

There is also the question of when to look at this again, and the only thing worth saying about it is that the timing belongs to you. A decision made once does not have to be defended forever, and it also does not expire because a product became popular or because a relative raised it at a family gathering. Look at it again when something changes that you think matters — your child’s age, a change at their school, a use you did not know existed — and not because somebody else decided you were overdue.

What this page was for is the practical part: what your boundary actually covers, where other people’s decisions will meet it, what to say to your own child, and what to ask the school. Those hold whether you keep this decision for a year or for good.

So we will end where we started. You do not owe anyone a justification, you have not fallen behind, and nothing here was written to move you. This is your family, and the decision not to have AI in it is yours to keep.