New York City Public Schools is banning more than half a million students from using artificial intelligence for the 2026-2027 academic year, the school district confirmed to ABC News.

The nation's largest school district said it will begin the school year next week with a sweeping ban on AI for students in in 2-K through eighth grade.

In a statement to ABC News, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the city is implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in pre-school or 2-K through eighth grade and will spend the next year "studying the impacts of this technology." Mamdani wrote in part, "the tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary." "We do not see it that way," he added.