NYC Artists, Writers, and Creatives call for a Moratorium on AI in Public Schools
Hundreds of New York City artists are rallying to halt the use of AI in classrooms.
This campaign, initiated by the AI Moratorium Coalition (AIM), highlights a collective plea for a two-year pause on AI in education. Nearly 500 artists, writers, and actors have signed a letter urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to protect the city’s creative future and prevent AI from infiltrating public schools.
The letter in full:
Dear Mayor Mamdani,
As writers, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, photographers, actors, directors, designers, comedians, and allied tradespeople, we’re writing to demand a two-year moratorium on generative AI in NYC schools, from 2K through 12th grade.
Generative AI is built on theft, having stolen the work of countless creatives who made New York the world’s capital of art and culture. Now the AI industry has invaded the city’s classrooms, eager to gather fresh material for its products, harvest data for third parties, and capture an entire generation of dependent customers.
We’re calling on you to stand up for the children of this city—the natural-born creatives, the innate innovators, tomorrow’s leaders—whose future is being sacrificed only to further enrich the planet’s wealthiest people. Numerous studies have documented AI’s harms to children, including reduced cognition, diminished mental health, and stunted social-emotional skills, while no independent study has demonstrated a durable benefit from AI in K–12 classrooms.
On a societal level, AI is an inequity machine that subjects communities of color to surveillance, amplifies racial and gender biases, raises the utility bills of struggling families, and endangers everyone by exacerbating pollution, drought, and planet-warming carbon emissions.
As artists, we stand with our fellow New Yorkers calling for a moratorium on AI in New York’s public schools. We refuse to let our city’s children be robbed of their right to a quality education and a habitable environment simply for a reckless experiment that’s designed to confine them—and us—to a permanent underclass.
You ran for office on a promise to be the people’s mayor. Please protect New York City’s creative future and set an example for school systems across the country. Protect its most vulnerable residents: our children. Pause AI in schools NOW.