How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More (Consumer Reports)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/artificial-intelligence/turn-off-ai-tools-gemini-apple-intelligence-copilot-and-more-a1156421356/

For the first year or two after the launch of ChatGPT, it felt like AI was all you ever heard about. Today, it’s everywhere you look, too. Apple and Samsung have added AI to their phones. Meta introduced it on Facebook and Instagram. AI is all over Google, from Search to Gmail, and you can even find it in Microsoft Word (not to mention the Windows operating system).

For some people, these tools are a welcome addition. For others, they may feel intrusive. The tech industry is so eager for you to try AI that some features are impossible to avoid. But you can disable some of them if you want to and see others less often.

Follow this guide to turn off AI functions on Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Samsung platforms and devices. This won’t eradicate AI from your life entirely, but it’s a shortcut to reducing the overload.

-snip-

That's from October 3, and I don't follow Consumer Reports. I ran across that only because it was in the replies to two Bluesky posts from DU favorite Molly Jong-Fast this morning:

How do I block all the AI slop? Also so far ai so just made my life 1000000 times more annoying.

— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) 2025-10-12T12:18:25.161Z

If it didn’t happen, I don’t want to see it.

— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) 2025-10-12T14:33:57.363Z

The replies she got are worth reading.

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[justaprogressive]

2. K'n'R!

[Prairie_Seagull]

3. Thank you highplainsdem.

Both my laptops are win 11 and the AI components are insidious and creepy. I have been able to minimize but not eradicate entirely.

I would happily pay someone to do this.

Fuckers.

[SheltieLover]

4. Tyvm!

[hunter]

5. None of those exist in my personal universe.

I have an old flip phone I use as a phone. Occasionally I use it for texts.

In general AI "services" are blacklisted on my Linux computers. there's no meta, no site-formerly-known-as-twitter, no google search, no apple, no microsoft, no advertising.

The only google service I use is youtube where I block any AI crap that appears on my youtube home page. Evidently the youtube algorithm is smart enough that AI crap rarely shows up there any more.

We shouldn't have to actively block any of that crap or delete preinstalled apps. Excluding AI ought to be the default setting.

I'll confess to being some kind of Luddite. I was happiest with the world wide web back in the HTML 3 era when you could turn off javascript, avoid plugins such as java, flash, or quicktime, and most web sites continued to work just fine.

[UTUSN]

6. K&R