Google’s added AI to the core of most of its products — whether you wanted it or not. Search, Gmail, Docs — it’s everywhere. And although some of these Gemini-powered features are smart, helpful or clever, not everyone wants them and may be looking for a way to turn off AI in Google’s apps and services.
Despite the fact that it feels like it’s forcing AI on you, Google thankfully makes it fairly easy to reduce, if not completely turn off, many of these features in your account. You just need to know where to look.
Below, we’ll show you what settings you need to tweak to remove most AI features from your Google account.
Disable Google Workspace smart features
You can choose to turn off one or both sets of smart features for your Google account.
Blake Stimac/CNET
Turning off Google Workspace smart features will have an immediate impact but it won’t remove Gemini icons from the services. After all, Google needs a way for you to easily enable Gemini again — whether intentionally or by accident.
Disabling Google Workspace smart features will strip away a lot of AI features from Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides. It also will take away features that you might not want to give up, too. Do you like it when Google Calendar pulls an event in directly from Gmail? That’ll be gone. You’ll also give up personalized search when using Google, making results less relevant to you.
If you’re determined to move forward, here’s how to do it:
Sign in to your Gmail accountClick the settings iconClick See all settings
Under the General tab:
Scroll down to Google Workspace smart features sectionClick Manage Workspace smart feature settings
Click the two toggles to off for:
Smart features in Google WorkspaceSmart features in other Google products
That’s it. This small tweak in settings should substantially reduce AI in your Google account and its apps.
What about AI Overviews?
If you thought that disabling the smart features above would rid you of Google’s AI Overviews, think again. There are a couple of things you can do to reduce their appearances, though.
Disable the Google Labs experiment
One way to reduce AI Overviews is to disable the experiment within Google Labs. This won’t necessarily disable all AI Overviews but it’s a box that shouldn’t go left unchecked.
Go to Google while signed into your accountClick on the Labs icon (beaker), if availableScroll down to AI experimentsClick on the AI Overviews and more experimentUse the toggle on the right to disable the experiment
Personally, turning off this experiment yielded no change when performing a search, although the feature is more than just a Google Labs experiment in more than 200 countries, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what that toggle actually does.
Add ‘-ai’ to your Google Search
The Google Labs experiment may reduce some AI Overviews in search but there’s still no official way to disable the feature completely. Still, one simple trick seems to have better results, and that’s just adding “-ai” to the end of your search query. Generally, this will do the trick and it works on desktop and mobile.
Read more: Customize Your Google Search Results With This New Feature
If you want something a little more involved for a bigger payoff, you can also set up a Google Search web filter. And of course, you can always use a different search engine or web browser.
