Understanding Google’s AI Integration

Google has embedded AI, referred to as Gemini‑powered features, throughout its suite of products. The AI appears in Search, Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, and other services, offering suggestions, automated summaries, and personalized results. While many find these enhancements useful, the pervasive presence can feel like a forced inclusion for users who prefer a less automated experience.

Turning Off Workspace Smart Features

The most direct way to reduce AI is to disable Google Workspace smart features. This action removes many AI‑driven capabilities from Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, including automatic event creation in Calendar and personalized search results. To do this, users should:

• Sign in to their Gmail account.
• Click the settings (gear) icon and choose “See all settings.”
• Under the “General” tab, scroll to the “Google Workspace smart features” section.
• Click “Manage Workspace smart feature settings.”
• Toggle off both “Smart features in Google Workspace” and “Smart features in other Google products.”

These toggles immediately strip away the majority of AI functions while leaving the option to re‑enable them later.

Managing AI Overviews

Disabling the smart features does not automatically eliminate AI Overviews, which appear in Search results and other areas. To further limit these, users can disable the related experiment in Google Labs:

• While signed in, click the Labs (beaker) icon if it is available.
• Scroll down to the “AI experiments” section.
• Select the “AI Overviews and more” experiment.
• Use the toggle to turn the experiment off.

Although turning off the experiment may not erase every AI Overview, it reduces their frequency.

Additional Tips to Reduce AI

For users seeking an extra layer of control, adding the phrase “-ai” to the end of a Google Search query often prevents AI‑generated overlays from appearing. This simple modifier works on both desktop and mobile browsers. Users may also consider setting up a web filter for Google Search or switching to an alternative search engine if they want to avoid AI features entirely.

Considerations After Disabling

When smart features are turned off, some conveniences are lost. For example, Gmail will no longer automatically pull events into Calendar, and search results become less personalized. However, the core functionality of Google’s services remains intact, and users retain the ability to re‑enable AI features through the same settings if they later decide they want the benefits.

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