Google quietly rolled out its Gemini AI chatbot to children under 13 through its Family Link program — and the default setting is "on." No permission slip. No opt-in. Just a cheerful email to parents letting them know their elementary schooler can now chat with an artificial intelligence that Google itself admits "can make mistakes."

How reassuring. The trillion-dollar company that already controls what your kid searches, reads, and watches in school just handed them an AI companion and said, "Good luck, Mom."

Here's how it works. If you're a parent who set up a supervised Google account for your child through Family Link, Google CEO Sundar Pichai's company sent you an email explaining that your kid can now use Gemini to "create stories, songs, and poetry." Sounds wholesome, right? Except the same email warns that your child "may encounter content you don't want them to see" and advises parents to "let your children know not to enter sensitive or personal info in Gemini." So Google knows the product isn't safe for kids — and shipped it to kids anyway.

The kicker? It's opt-out, not opt-in. Your child automatically gets access to Gemini unless you manually go in and disable it. If you missed that email — and let's be honest, who reads every notification from Google — your kid is already chatting with the machine.

That little detail caught the attention of some very serious people. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, known as EPIC, and the children's advocacy group Fairplay filed a formal request with the Federal Trade Commission demanding an investigation into whether Google violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act — COPPA — which requires verifiable parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. An opt-out email doesn't cut it.

Josh Golin, Executive Director of Fairplay, didn't mince words. "Shame on Google for attempting to unleash this dangerous and addictive technology on our kids," Golin said. "Gemini and other AI companion bots are a serious threat to children's mental health and social development, as well as their online safety and privacy."

EPIC Counsel Suzanne Bernstein was equally blunt: "Google must suspend its high-risk rollout of Gemini to young children. If Google wants to market its products to children, it is Google's responsibility to ensure that the product is safe and developmentally appropriate for those children."

And they're not alone. A coalition that includes U.S. PIRG, the Anxious Generation Campaign, Design It For Us, and the Eating Disorders Coalition joined the push, along with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and MIT Professor Sherry Turkle.

But here's the part that should really make your blood boil. As Blaze Media columnist Auron MacIntyre pointed out, Google already controls the entire algorithmic ecosystem through which American schoolchildren learn to gather information and judge its validity. Tens of millions of kids sit in front of Google Chromebooks every school day, using Google Classroom, Google Docs, and now Google's AI. The New Yorker's Jessica Winter described how students at a public middle school received new Chromebooks pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini — so when a sixth-grader starts writing an essay, a prompt pops up: "Help me write." When they start a slideshow, it's "Help me visualize."

Think about that. We're not teaching kids to think. We're teaching them to outsource thinking to Google before they've even learned how to do it themselves.

Meanwhile, Google is also staring down an $8.25 million class-action settlement over data collection from children. U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts in the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval, calling the deal "fair, reasonable, and adequate." A final hearing is set for September 24. So they're paying millions to settle one round of child data violations while launching a brand-new program that privacy experts say does the exact same thing.

FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson — who replaced Lina Khan — said "some of the Commission's most valuable work has been the enforcement of COPPA." We'll see if he means it. The updated COPPA rule takes effect June 23, and if ever there were a test case, a trillion-dollar company auto-enrolling children into an AI chatbot without parental consent would be it.

Google already controls what you search. What you see. What your kid reads for homework. Now they want to be your child's first conversation partner, study buddy, and creative collaborator — before you even get a say.

If that doesn't wake parents up, nothing will.