When I speak with patrons at the library about AI, their feelings about it generally fall into three categories:
- AI has amazing potential and I can’t wait to learn more and try it all!
- Meh, whatever
- Why won’t AI leave me alone?!! I didn’t ask for it and it’s everywhere! Turn it off!!
Where do I fall? It depends on the day. If an AI summary at the top of search results is wrong, I’ll complain about everything wrong with AI. When a tool saves me a ton of time, I fall in love with it.
If you are in the third group, or if you would prefer to opt-in to AI as needed, this next series of posts is for you. Over the next several weeks, I’ll highlight how to tame AI on several popular platforms where these features are turned on by default. This week is about Google Gemini, and the various places it shows up.
Google Search
If you search using Google, you have certainly seen the automatic AI overview at the top of the results that attempts to answer your question.
While this seems helpful, it’s just a starting point. The results can’t be fully trusted because AIs have been known to “hallucinate”, meaning they make things up. In the wrong situation, trusting the results could be dangerous. If you would rather stop seeing these overviews, the solution is simple. Add -ai to the end of your search term. Like this:
Gmail/Chat/Meet/Google Drive (Web-based)
If you use Gmail in a browser, you can disable Gemini once and it applies across browsers.
- Log into your Gmail account
- Click on settings (gear icon in upper right)
- Select “see all settings”
- In the “General” tab, scroll down to Google Workspace smart features
- Click on “Manage Workplace smart features settings”
- Use the toggles to turn off smart features in Google Workspace and/or other Google Products. Chat, Meet, and Drive are bundled in the first toggle with Gmail. The second toggle concerns non-Workspace Google apps.
Chrome Browser
This option is not found in the regular settings area. Open the Chrome browser and type this in the address bar: chrome://settings/ai. There, you can access toggles to turn off experimental AI features. This option may only be available to administrators if your school or workplace manages your browser/device.
If you decide to use Gemini, but don’t want it to save your data, you can control that by pointing your Chrome browser to https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and adjusting the settings.
Android/iOS Phones
Disabling Gemini on a phone is a bit different, and it depends on what kind of phone you have. This will be covered in a future installment of this series that will focus on AI in phone apps.
Summary
While AI isn’t going away any time soon, there are ways to limit its influence on your daily technology use. Stay tuned for more posts about how to manage AI on other platforms.
