How to avoid AI in as many places as possible

It’s not easy wanting nothing to do with AI these days. As a tech advice journalist, I’ve heard from plenty of folks who were perfectly happy with how their apps and operating systems worked before the artificial intelligence boom. They’re not interested in AI-generated search answers, summarization buttons, and offers to help them write, yet it’s not always clear how to turn these features off. But if you’re willing to jump through some hoops—or, perhaps, to adopt apps that haven’t jumped on the AI bandwagon—you can still wind back the clock to a mostly AI-free existence. Here’s how: Turn off AI in Google and other search engines While Google really wants to answer your search queries with AI, it’s quietly added a way to suppress AI answers by adding “-ai” to your searches. Having to enter this every time isn’t ideal. But if your web browser supports custom search engines, you can set it up to automatically add “-ai” to the end of every query. In Chrome for desktop, for instance: Head to Settings > Search Engines > Manage search engines and site search. Hit the “Add” button next to “Site search.” Put “Google No AI” in the Name field and “gnai” in the Shortcut field. In the URL field, enter the following: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s$20-ai Hit the ⋮ vertical ellipses next to your newly-created Site Search entry, and select “Make default” to use this version of Google every time. Instructions for other browsers vary, but here’s a guide you can follow. Alternatively, you can switch to a search engine whose AI settings are easier to control: DuckDuckGo’s “No-AI” extension for Chrome or Firefox will set DuckDuckGo as your default with AI answers disabled. You can also disable AI for DuckDuckGo’s website and mobile app via Settings > AI Features. Brave Search has a settings page where you can turn off the “Answe