How to disable or avoid intrusive AI

One of the biggest questions I get at Drop-In Time at the library (besides “what is taking up all my cloud storage?”) is how to disable or avoid intrusive AI that shows up where people don’t want it. This is a guide for people who would like less intrusive AI in their tech environment. Maybe you like AI and find it useful? That’s fine, this document is probably not for you. Additions/edits welcome. Leave a comment or drop me an email. This page is available at the short URL https://NoToAI.org

Adobe Acrobat

Windows: Menu > Preferences > Generative AI
macOS: View > Preferences > Generative AI

Uncheck the checkbox on the page, click Save.

Adobe Reader

Choose Disable new Acrobat Reader from the top menu (upper left), approve the dialog box and restart.

Android/Gemini

Depending on your phone’s manufacturer, you may be able to uninstall the Gemini app entirely. If not, there are some application-specific ways you can turn off some of its features

Messages

Tap your account picture, select Messages settings, then Gemini in Messages, and toggle the assistant off.

Other features in other apps

Tap your profile icon, select Gemini Apps activity, and then choose Turn off or Turn off and delete activity. Next, tap the profile icon again and go to the Connected Apps setting (check the Personal Intelligence setting). Disable all the apps where you don’t want Gemini.

Power Button

If Gemini has “taken over” your power button, you can turn this off. Go to Settings, then System, then Gestures and change the settings under Press & Hold Power Button

If that doesn’t work you can try opening Settings, then searching for Power key

Apple Intelligence & Siri

Only exists on iPhone 16 and newer Macs and iPads Open Settings (iPhone or iPad) or System Settings (Mac) and choose Apple Intelligence & Siri. Then turn off the Apple Intelligence option. Confirm your choice in the dialog that appears by tapping Turn Off Apple Intelligence. More details on how to turn off specific parts of Apple Intelligence and leave others alone.

Apple has a “learn from this application” feature which can be on even when Apple Intelligence is not on. To turn it off

For Mac: go to System Settings – Apple Intelligence & Siri. Select About Siri, Dictation & Privacy… near the end of the page, turn off apps you don’t want Siri to learn from

For iOS: Settings – Apple Intelligence & Siri, scroll down to Apps, disable “Learn from this App”

Browser-embedded AI

Chrome/AI Nano

Type chrome://flags into the address bar and hit Enter. You’ll see a list of system flags and a search bar; look for GLIC [Google live in Chrome]. This will filter the massive list down to about a dozen AI features. The second search term you’ll need in this window is “Gemini” set them all to “disabled.” Don’t accidentally enable the couple of settings which default to disabled.

Edge

Similar to Chrome: type edge://flags into the Edge address bar, hit Enter, then type “AI” or “Copilot” into the search box.

Click Appearance in the left-hand Settings sidebar, and scroll down to Copilot and sidebar

Turn the sidebar off, and turn off the “Personalize my top sites in customize sidebar” and “Allow sidebar apps to show notifications” toggles.

Click Copilot under App specific settings. Turn off “Show Copilot button on the toolbar.” Then, back in the Copilot and sidebar settings, turn off the “Show sidebar button” toggle that has just appeared.

Click Languages in the left-hand navigation. Disable “Use Copilot for writing on the web.”

Firefox

The latest Firefox (148 and later) has a feature to block all AI enhancements. So update, if you can, go to Settings and look for AI Controls. Turn Block AI Enhancements on (or select more granularly from the list)

Using Firefox, this extension removes a lot of the AI junk if you use Google as your default search engine.

DuckDuckGo

DDG is both a browser and a search engine. They have a no-AI version you can get to by going to https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ You can also change your default search engine to this and stop using Google, here are steps for every browser. If you want to go all out and get the DDG browser, they also have instructions on how to do that.

Google Workspace (Gmail, Google Docs &c)

In Gmail, click the Settings (gear) icon, and then select See all settings. On the General tab, scroll down to Google Workspace smart features. Click Manage Workspace smart feature settings and toggle off two options: Smart features in Google Workspace and Smart features in other Google products. Uncheck the box next to Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet on the same tab.

In Gmail for Android the workspace smart features are under the Gmail hamburger/dropdown menu – Settings – Account name

Slack

Owners and admins of Slack workspaces have some options in disabling AI features. Here is their help page about managing those features.

AI lives in here in a few places. Suggested Replies, go to Settings – Chats – Suggestions & smart replies and toggle off Suggested replies. AI Sticker suggestions can be shut off in that same menu. For AI message summaries, those are managed in a different location: Settings – Notifications – AI message summaries. Depending on what operating system you’re running, it may also be in Settings – Chat – Private Processing – Private Processing Features

Windows 11/Copilot

Copilot exists both as an embedded AI agent in Office 365 and also built into the Windows 11 operating system. Right-click the Copilot entry in the Start menu and select Uninstall. If that option isn’t there, head over to your installed apps list (Start – Settings – Apps) and uninstall Copilot from there.

In certain builds of Windows 11, Copilot is stuck into the OS, so a simple uninstall might not work. In that case, you can toggle it off via the settings: Start – Settings – Personalization – Taskbar – turn off Copilot File Explorer has some AI built into it which can be turn-onable accidentally. To remove. Start – Settings – Privacy & Security – Click to Do.

Notepad has its own special Copilot, so you’ll need to disable AI there separately. Open the Notepad settings, find the AI features section (or a sparkly icon near a Writing Tools section), and toggle Copilot off.

Office 365/Outlook There is a separate Enable Copilot checkbox in each app and the checkbox only applies to that app on that device. Read more about how to turn it off. If you don’t have that option, you can change your privacy settings to disable Copilot.

“Text and image generation” are turned on by default, affecting Notepad, Photos, Snipping Tool, and Xbox. Turn this off. It is complicated, though not impossible, to remove Copilot from your Windows computer entirely. Here is a link that gets into the details. If you feel comfortable installing software O&O ShutUp 10 is one way to do that, Win11DeBloat is another.

Yahoo Mail

Cick the … More on the bottom of the left-hand sidebar, select Settings, select AI Features and switch Message summaries off.

Zoom

Sign in at Zoom.com. Scroll to My Account on the left and select Settings. Go to the Zoom AI tab on the right where you can disable everything. Note: new AI options get added and they default to “on” so check back. To the right of the Zoom AI tab click on My Notes and disable “Allow participants to transcribe meetings with My Notes”

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to un-AI your internet
Library Freedom Project has a lot of handouts about AI on their Resources page
Do Not Talk To Me About “AI” printable cards

Inspired by the librarians from Bangor.

Last updated 16aug26