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Days before the school year started, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced new restrictions on student-facing artificial intelligence tools used in hundreds of New York City public schools.

“We will fully discontinue or disable the AI components of more than 38 previously allowed programs that do not meet our new safety and oversight standards,” the mayor said , though he did not share their names.

After more than a month of requests, Chalkbeat obtained the list of products flagged by the Education Department. It includes widely used reading and math curriculums, student assessment tools and even a chatbot the Education Department itself developed.

Chalkbeat reached out to the companies behind all 38 products on the list. Several insisted their products don’t use the kind of artificial intelligence prohibited under the city’s policy and said they were unsure why they were flagged.

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The Education Department said its restrictions apply to student-facing generative AI features, not necessarily the entire products, and that it is working with companies to determine whether those features can be disabled. A handful of companies said they have already turned off the AI elements of their tools and have been given the green light to operate in city schools.

The companies’ confusion raises questions about how the Education Department vetted the products and implemented sweeping new restrictions just as the school year was getting underway. (The full list of flagged products, along with company responses, appears below.)

Some products were banned outright, including Amira, the controversial AI-powered reading tutor used in more than 200 city schools. Education Department officials said it could not function without AI. The city also discontinued student access to the Education Department’s own chatbot “teaching assistant” that it built in partnership with Microsoft and was deployed in six schools last year.

But other companies were baffled that their products appeared on the list at all.

Wordly, a translation tool that helps educators communicate with students who are learning English, was flagged even though the company says it does not use generative AI, and the city’s policy has a carveout for tools that help English language learners .

“Wordly is working on getting our product off the banned protocol,” a company spokesperson wrote.

Multiple products from HMH — a major player in the city’s new reading curriculum mandate and which employs former New York City schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos — were also on the list of products that violate city policy. One of them is Read180, a program designed to help struggling readers. Another HMH product, Arriba la Lectura, is allowed for students learning English but not other students, according to the Education Department. HMH contends that none of its products on the city’s list use student-facing AI.

An Education Department spokesperson said they flagged products with student-facing generative AI but did not explain how they determined which tools met that definition, including in cases where companies disputed that their tools use AI. Officials said they are working with companies on a case-by-case basis to determine if their products can be used without AI and be reinstated.