Three students huddle around a computer in a classroom at Eric Graves Memorial Junior High in Dartmouth, N.S., as David Waugh gestures to an AI-generated image of a sweatshirt created for a home ec assignment.

It's a scene relatively new in Halifax-area classrooms as teachers like Waugh begin to embrace the growing technology while weighing the ethics of using chatbots and other AI tools to shape young minds.

"The issue is that going forward, it's going to be here anyways," said Waugh. "So we nee…