The Workshop · AI Tools
The AI Tools Bridge
A practical map of which AI tools cadets can actually use, what they're good for, and the rules that come with them. Written for parents and cadets together.
The Workshop · AI Tools
A practical map of which AI tools cadets can actually use, what they're good for, and the rules that come with them. Written for parents and cadets together.
FOR PARENTS & CADETS
The Academy doesn't supply AI tools. Parents and cadets choose what to use — the Academy gives you the framework for choosing well.
Before you sign in to anything, show the grown-up. This isn't asking permission for fun — it's the rule that makes everything else work. AI tools collect data; your grown-up reads the fine print, you don't.
Don't type your full name, address, school, or your friends' info into an AI tool. Don't upload photos of yourself or family. The AI tool keeps what you type. Use a generic version of the question instead.
Every tool on this page can hallucinate. Every one. The cadet who uses the answer without checking is the one who gets fooled. If a fact, name, or number matters, look it up.
If a tool asks for a photo of you, asks personal questions, says something scary, or gets pushy — close it. Tell your grown-up. That's not weakness. That's exactly what the smartest cadets do.
The tiers below describe how the Academy thinks about each kind of tool. This is not a list of approved accounts. Whether your cadet uses any specific tool is between cadet and grown-up.
These tools either have a kids' mode, a school setting, or are explicitly built with younger users in mind. The Academy thinks of them as a reasonable starting point — with grown-up oversight as the rule, not the exception.
Some platforms (e.g., Khan's tutoring assistant, school-issued AI tools) run a chat assistant inside an educational sandbox. Answers are filtered, the model doesn't store as much, and the focus is on tutoring rather than freeform chat. If your cadet's school provides one, that's usually the safest first AI tool to use.
The voice assistant on a phone or smart speaker (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) is technically a kind of AI. It's the lowest-stakes one. Good for quick lookups: spelling, definitions, conversions, weather. Cadets often already use these.
The Safe Prompting Playground is built into the Academy. It's not a real AI — it's a simulator. Cadets can practice writing prompts and see canned good/bad responses without sending data to any external service. No account, no data leaves the device.
These are the big chat assistants — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and similar. Most have a 13+ age requirement (some require 18+ or parental consent). They're the most useful AI tools available, and also the most powerful, which is exactly why the Academy treats them as supervised use.
The most widely-used chat AI. Powerful, broad, and very confident even when wrong. Has a usage policy that requires age 13+ (with parental consent under 18). It saves your conversations by default; that can be turned off in settings.
Another major chat assistant, often praised for thoughtful long-form responses. Same kind of age policy as ChatGPT. Tends to be slightly more cautious, which can be a feature when cadets are first learning.
Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, and similar are often built into products you already use (search, email, office software). The same rules apply — check the age policy of the specific product, set up the account with a grown-up, treat answers as drafts not truth.
These are tools the Academy doesn't recommend for cadet use right now. Either the safety controls aren't there, the age policy is older, or the kind of use just isn't appropriate for someone still building judgment.
Apps that let users chat with AI “characters” or AI friends/girlfriends. Many have well-documented safety problems — including coaching minors into unhealthy conversations, romantic content, and bypassing age gates. The Academy says: not now, regardless of what the app's age rating says.
Public image generators (Midjourney, raw Stable Diffusion, etc.) can produce content cadets shouldn't see, even by accident, even with safe-mode toggles. The image-AI Workshop (queued) will introduce supervised image tools when it ships. Until then, this whole category is held back.
Tools that copy a person's voice or face. The Academy will eventually teach the ethics of this in a dedicated workshop — including the consent rule that you don't clone someone without permission, ever. Until that workshop, cadets shouldn't use these tools.
The most important AI tool a cadet has is their own judgment. Every tool on this page is just an extension of that. The Workshop builds the judgment first — the tools come second. That's the whole order.