When Los Angeles Unified School District launched a districtwide AI chatbot nicknamed “Ed” in March, officials boasted that it represented a revolutionary new tool that was only possible thanks to generative AI — a personal assistant that could point each student to tailored resources and assignments and playfully nudge and encourage them to keep going.

But last month, just a few months after the fanfare of the public launch event, the district abruptly shut down its Ed chatbot, after the company it contracted to build the system, AllHere Education, suddenly furloughed most of its staff citing financial difficulties. The company had raised more than $12 million in venture capital, and its five-year contract with the LA district was for about $6 million over five years, about half of which the company had already been paid.

It’s not yet clear what happened: LAUSD officials declined interview requests from EdSurge, and officials from AllHere did not respond to requests for comment about the company’s future. A statement issued by the school district said “several educational technology companies are interested in acquiring” AllHere to continue its work, though nothing concrete has been announced.

A tech leader for the school district, which is the nation’s second-largest, told the Los Angeles Times that some information in the Ed system is still available to students and families, just not in chatbot form. But it was the chatbot that was touted as the key innovation — which relied on human moderators at AllHere to monitor some of the chatbot’s output who are no longer actively working on the project.

Some edtech experts contacted by EdSurge say that the implosion of the cutting-edge AI tool offers lessons for other schools and colleges working to make use of generative AI. Most of those lessons, they say, center on a factor that is more difficult than many people realize: the challenges of corralling and safeguarding data.

Read the full article about student AI data by Jeffrey R. Young at EdSurge.