Salamanca School District Pauses $57,590 Classroom Robot Pilot Over Student Privacy
Updated
Updated · Fox News · Aug 3
Salamanca School District Pauses $57,590 Classroom Robot Pilot Over Student Privacy
3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Aug 3
Summary
July 24 brought a halt to Salamanca City Central School District’s fall 2026 pilot of one Realbotix humanoid robot and the Optio AI assistant while it negotiates enhanced student-data privacy terms with New York state.
The $57,590 program was meant to support AI and robotics classes, with about 500 high school students gaining access to curriculum-trained avatars and one physical robot serving as a supervised classroom tool.
District officials said the system would run as a closed platform rather than an open-internet chatbot, with no manufacturer access to personally identifiable student data and no facial-recognition or recording features on the classroom unit.
No new launch date has been set, and the district said it will keep consulting community members and other stakeholders before deciding whether to restart a pilot that highlights both the appeal and privacy risks of humanlike AI in schools.