---
title: "AI in November: schools get an opt-out, Apple bets on AI, open tooling matures"
url: https://llmreport.gr/news/ai-in-november-schools-get-an-opt-out-apple-bets-on-ai-open-tooling-matures/
language: en
published: 2026-11-09T10:10:13.785Z
updated: 2026-11-09T10:10:13.790Z
site: "LLM Report"
section: "AI assistants"
---

# AI in November: schools get an opt-out, Apple bets on AI, open tooling matures

This month's analysis covers Google's AI-or-Search choice for schools, Apple's earnings and always-listening Watch features, and open benchmarks and adapters for developers. Each affects how teams adopt AI.

> Written with AI from the sources listed below. Reviewed by Konstantinos Perros. How we write: https://llmreport.gr/how-we-write/

## Key facts

- Google will switch off Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search for K-12 student accounts unless administrators enable them, and schools cannot disable the AI tools while keeping Search. [2] [1]
- Google DeepMind says its PlanAssist tool cut average householder assessment time for planning officers by 58% in pilots in Barnet, Camden and Dorset, and will extend to 12 more English councils. [8]
- Apple reported iPhone revenue of $57.6 billion, up 17.5%, and its CFO said AI offers opportunities across product upgrades, third-party apps and partnerships. [5] [6]
- Apple's Audio Intelligence features Live Rewind and Siri Recap entered developer beta, with Apple saying raw audio is handled in dedicated hardware and not saved as a file. [3] [4]
- CWE-bench v2 offers 100 public security tasks across 91 CWEs, and Gemini 4 Argon leads the 11 evaluated models with 67.8% pass@1. [7]

## Schools face an AI-or-Search choice, while a UK planning tool scales

According to The Verge, Google will turn off Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search for K-12 student accounts unless administrators explicitly enable them. Ars Technica reports the change rolls out over the coming months and that these products are bundled, so a school allows all of them or none.

Chris Phillips, Google's vice president of education, told The New York Times that Search and AI are deeply integrated, and that schools opting out will show students a message saying Search is unavailable. Sen. Bernie Sanders called the arrangement extortion. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani said no corporation should dictate how children are taught, and California official Rohit Chopra said Big Tech should not strong-arm schools.

Google argues the change gives schools more choice, and The Verge relays its statement that each service can be turned on or off individually, which conflicts with the bundling described elsewhere in the same reporting. Google is also embedding its Guided Learning feature, meant to help students work through problems, into AI Overviews in Search, with testing in select US schools this month.

In a different public-sector setting, Google DeepMind describes PlanAssist, built with Gemini, which validates application documents, checks heritage constraints and planning policies, and drafts cited reports that officers can edit. DeepMind says the tool cut average householder assessment time by 58% in pilots since June, and that more than 70% of generated reports were approved without edits. It is moving into a 12-month Beta with live applications, adding twelve councils in three cohorts for a total of 15. DeepMind stresses that planning officers keep the final say.

## Apple pairs earnings with AI features that listen

The Verge reports Apple's best-ever fiscal year for revenue and earnings per share, with iPhone revenue up 17.5% to $57.6 billion and Mac revenue up 24% to $10.8 billion. Shares still fell in premarket trading after Apple warned that rising memory costs would pressure holiday-quarter margins. The Verge also reports capital expenditure of $2.2 billion last quarter, against $77.3 billion at Amazon and $51.4 billion at Alphabet, noting those totals are companywide and not only AI.

CFO Kevan Parekh said AI gives customers a reason to upgrade and opens opportunities in third-party apps, partnerships and first-party offerings. TechCrunch says he did not detail the third-party angle, and cites a Reuters report that investors wonder whether Apple could take a cut of AI agents distributed through the App Store. Apple guided services growth of 8 to 9% for the December quarter. The Verge adds that Siri AI uses models developed with Google's Gemini technology.

On the product side, Apple released Audio Intelligence features in a developer beta. Live Rewind shows a text snippet of the last 15 seconds of audio after a double press of the Digital Crown, and Siri Recap generates a title and key points after a conversation. TechCrunch says unsaved snippets are deleted after 30 seconds and the features are opt-in for Apple Watch Series 12. The Verge and TechCrunch name the beta differently, watchOS 27.3 and iOS 27.3. Apple says raw audio is handled in dedicated hardware, is not saved as a file, and is inaccessible to the operating system, apps and Apple.

## Open benchmarks and modular models for builders

Collinear AI published CWE-bench v2 on Hugging Face: 100 public tasks in which an agent must find and fix a security weakness in a real open-source repository without breaking existing functionality. Scoring is programmatic, and a held-out set is kept private. Of 11 models evaluated, Gemini 4 Argon leads with 67.8% pass@1 and 81.0% pass@4, just ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 at 67.3% and 78.0%. At least one model solves 95 tasks.

IBM released Granite Switch 4.1.1, a backwards-compatible patch that updates a multilingual speech-to-text model covering 10 languages and a Decision adapter. IBM says only those parts were retrained, the base model was untouched, and an Adapter SDK is planned. A Hugging Face community post also shows NVIDIA's Nemotron Voice Agent running a Halloween installation on a single workstation.

## Our view

The common thread is control. Google's school decision shows that defaults and bundling can matter as much as features, and administrators in any country should check what a switch actually disables before relying on it. Apple's Watch features show that privacy claims will be central to ambient AI; they are Apple's statements, and users and regulators will test them.

For developers, public benchmarks and patchable adapters make it easier to measure and update AI behaviour without starting over. Teams in Greece and the EU should check language coverage and regional availability for each product before planning around it. Watch how the school dispute develops and whether Apple clarifies its third-party AI plans.

## Sources

1. Ars Technica: [Google will let schools skip AI tools, but they have to give up search, too](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/11/google-will-let-schools-skip-ai-tools-but-they-have-to-give-up-search-too)
2. The Verge: [Google is entirely disabling Search in schools that don’t want AI](https://www.theverge.com/tech/1025411/google-turn-off-search-ai-features)
3. The Verge: [Apple’s latest watchOS beta includes its new always-on Audio Intelligence features](https://www.theverge.com/tech/1025002/apple-watch-audio-intelligence-watchos-beta)
4. TechCrunch: [Apple Watch’s AI features for rewinding and recapping conversations begin beta testing](https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/apple-watchs-ai-features-for-rewinding-and-recapping-conversations-begin-beta-testing)
5. The Verge: [Apple is all in on AI — its own and everyone else’s](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1025245/apple-earnings-q4-ai)
6. TechCrunch: [Apple may try to increase revenue by doing…something with third-party AI apps](https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/apple-may-try-to-increase-revenue-by-doing-something-with-third-party-ai-apps)
7. Hugging Face: [CWE-bench v2: More coverage, quality, and transparency](https://huggingface.co/blog/cwe-bench)
8. Google DeepMind: [Speeding up planning decisions with AI](https://deepmind.google/blog/speeding-up-planning-decisions-with-ai)
9. Hugging Face: [Granite Switch 4.1.1 — Update models like you update software](https://huggingface.co/blog/ibm-granite/granite-switch-4-1-1)
10. Hugging Face: [nemotron-halloween](https://huggingface.co/blog/nvidia/nemotron-halloween)