How have you or someone you know been affected by Grok or other AI tools? Please include as much detail as possible. Do you have any concerns?

Since the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, generative artificial intelligence has trickled down from adults in their offices to university students in campus libraries to teenagers in high school hallways. Now it's reaching the youngest among us, and parents and teachers are grappling with the most responsible way to introduce their under-13s to a new technology that may fundamentally reshape the future. Though the terms of service for ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and other AI models specify that the tools are only meant for those over 13, parents and teachers are taking the matter of AI education into their own hands. Inspired by a story we published on parents who are teaching their children to use AI to set them up for success in school and at work, we asked Guardian readers how and why – or why not – others are doing the same. Though our original story only concerned parents, we have also included teachers in the responses published below, as preparing children for future studies and jobs is one of educators' responsibilities as well.

Whether the cause is a disability, long illness, psychological challenges, or parental choice, many children find themselves facing the daunting task of acquiring an education at home. During the global pandemic, homeschooling issues became a particular concern, as teachers and parents attempted to use their time and energy most productively and vulnerable students worried about falling behind, among other anxieties. On a practical level, in some cases, homeschooling can eat up 10% of a particular school's budget even when less than 1% of the pupils require the service. As the world shut down, international technology company NTT DATA Business Solutions attempted to remedy apprehensions by creating a digital teaching engine to help children learn, teachers teach, and parents homeschool. Not only would the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Learning Helper assist students in improving reading and other skills, the new platform would also manage to meet the emotional needs of each child.

While some education experts applaud the advancement of high-tech grammar tools as a way to help people more clearly express their thoughts, others aren't so sure. Artificial intelligence, according to the contrarians, is only as smart as the humans who program it, and often just as biased. "Language is part of your heritage and identity, and if you're using a tool that is constantly telling you, 'You're wrong,' that is not a good thing," said Paulo Blikstein, associate professor of communications, media and learning technology design at Columbia University Teachers College. "There is not one mythical, monolithical (English) … And every time we have tried to curtail the evolution of a language, it has never gone well." In the era of spellcheck and auto-correct, does it matter that my son can't spell?

Girls who play video games struggle to make friends later in life, a new study suggests. Researchers studied more than 870 youngsters aged six to 12, as well as their parents and teachers, to make the finding. They found that the time boys spent playing games has no harmful effect on their social development. But 10-year-old girls who spent more time playing video games developed weaker social skills two years later than girls who spent less time playing. Girls who play video games struggle to make friends later in life, a new study suggests.

Imagine a world in which you can scan your face to board a train, check into a hotel, order a meal at a café, or even track your food from farm to table. In China, all of this is already happening. Facial recognition became more pervasive this year after the Chinese government in December 2017 announced an ambitious plan to achieve greater face-reading accuracy by 2020. The country also plans to introduce a system that will identify any of its 1.3 billion citizens in just three seconds. Public and private enterprises have rushed to adopt the futuristic, artificial intelligence-powered technology, implementing facial-recognition systems in transportation networks, medical facilities, and law enforcement initiatives.

At the end of the summer term at Southgate primary school in Crawley, West Sussex, a class of 10-year-olds are folding together cardboard models of remote-controlled cars and decorating them with pipe cleaners, pens, googly eyes and tape, with the aim of using them to transport a biscuit across a table and into the open mouths of their teachers. The kids are playing with Nintendo Labo, an ingenious game that comes with a box of fold-up cardboard models that turn from inert facsimiles into working toys, with the addition of a Nintendo Switch console. A cardboard piano becomes a working keyboard with a screen. A cardboard fishing rod can be used to play a fishing game, attached by string to a base housing the console. They are fun to play with, but they also teach engineering principles – the software includes a child-friendly but comprehensive breakdown of how the console uses features such as vibration, infrared cameras and gyroscopes to make the models work.

It was time to begin teaching my class. The children were in their seats, laptops turned on, ready to begin. I scanned the doorway, hoping for one more girl to arrive: there were nine boys in my class and just two girls. I was conducting free coding classes, but young girls were still reluctant to attend. As a 15-year-old computer enthusiast, I was baffled by this lack of interest.