Overview
- The Salamanca City Central School District approved a roughly $57,590 pilot in June to use a Realbotix M‑Series humanoid called Sally and an AI assistant called Optio, and the district put the project on hold Friday after the state education commissioner raised legal, privacy and safety concerns.
- District and vendor materials said Sally would stay stationary on a closed internal network with no internet access, recording, or facial recognition and that Optio would provide virtual tutoring via student ID codes, but those technical safeguards did not ease public worries.
- Teachers, the Salamanca Teachers’ Association and the New York State United Teachers union publicly opposed the pilot as inappropriate and dehumanizing, and members of the Seneca Nation criticized the choice of a district with a large Indigenous student population as culturally insensitive.
- Realbotix’s 2024 acquisition of Simulacra/RealDoll and reports that students helped choose the robot’s youthful female appearance intensified objections and led the district to negotiate enhanced student data privacy terms with the New York State Education Department before any relaunch.
- The episode highlights a wider policy gap on AI and humanoid systems in classrooms and is likely to accelerate statewide guidance or legislation, a development that could change how districts vet vendors, protect student data, and involve educators and communities in technology decisions.