How to turn off the AI you never asked for in Google, Chrome, Instagram, WhatsApp, iPhone and Mac

Before you go hunting through settings, it helps to know the honest picture, because it saves you an hour of looking for a switch that does not exist. Start with Google Search, where Google's own help page says AI Overviews cannot be turned off, and AI Mode sits in the tab row of every search. Meta AI in WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook cannot be removed either, only muted. And on iPhone and Mac, the 27 updates took away the single Apple Intelligence switch that the 26 versions had, so now you turn it off one feature at a time.

So the job here is not one big switch. It is a handful of small ones in each app, plus a couple of tricks that hide what cannot be removed. The list below shows where each one stands, so you know which steps are worth your time.

When you search on Google, look at the row of tabs under the search box and pick Web. Google's help page describes it as plain text links without features like AI Overviews. When we tried it on 28 October 2026, the same search showed an AI Overview on the normal results and ten plain links on the Web tab.

Clicking Web every time gets old, so make it the default. The Web tab has its own address with udm=14 in it, and you can tell your browser to always search that way. In Chrome on a computer, go to chrome://settings/searchEngines, find Site search, click Add, fill in the three boxes below, then open the three-dot menu next to the new entry and choose Make default. Firefox and Edge let you add the same address as a custom search engine. Safari and the Google app do not allow custom search engines, so on an iPhone your choices are a bookmark to the Web results, a Safari extension that adds udm=14 for you, or a different browser.

There are two honest warnings here. Google has never officially documented udm=14, even though it has worked since the Web filter launched in May 2024, so it can stop working one day. And the Web tab also drops shopping results, knowledge panels and most map results, so for a restaurant near you the normal tab is still handier.

Chrome has three separate AI pieces, and each one has its own switch. The first is the AI Mode button in the address bar. Right-click the address bar and untick Always show AI Mode, and the button and its extra menu go away. Google's help page gives no way to turn AI Mode off inside Chrome completely, so the button is hidden rather than removed.

The second is Gemini in Chrome, the sparkle button at the top of the window. Go to Settings, AI innovations, Gemini in Chrome and turn off Show Gemini at the top of the browser, and on the same page turn off Share current tab by default if you leave Gemini on at all. You can also right-click it and choose Unpin Gemini. It cannot be uninstalled, because it is part of Chrome rather than an extension.

The third one most people never notice. Chrome quietly downloads an on-device AI model of about 4 GB, in a file called weights.bin, and if you delete that file by hand while the feature is still on, Chrome simply downloads it again. The clean way is Settings, System, On-device AI, or type on-device in the search box at the top of Chrome's settings. Google's help page says that when you turn it off, Chrome deletes the model files itself and does not download them again. Know that this also turns off Chrome's on-device scam detection and some writing help, which makes it a real trade-off rather than a simple setting.

Here is a change from this month that confused a lot of people. Google's privacy policy, updated on 16 October 2026, now allows data from Gmail and Google Photos to help personalise ads. That only happens if you connected those apps to Search, AI Mode or Gemini through a feature called Personal Intelligence. Google's help page says ads will not be based directly on your inbox or your photo library, and that what can be used are summaries, excerpts and guesses the AI makes about them. So if you never connected anything, nothing changed for you, and if you did, you can undo it.

For Search and AI Mode, go to google.com/search-personalization, open Additional Personal Intelligence, then Connected Content Apps, and disconnect Google Workspace and Google Photos. For the Gemini app, open Personal Intelligence, Connected Apps from your profile and switch each app off. Personal Intelligence is not offered in the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland or Nigeria, so if you live there this step does not apply.

Disconnecting does not delete what was already saved. Your Search history from those connected sessions stays until you delete it at activity.google.com, and Google says that history can still be used to improve its products.

Meta AI cannot be removed from WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook, and the button in the search bar stays whatever you do. What you can do is make it quiet. On Instagram and Messenger, open the Meta AI chat, open its details and choose Mute, set to until you change it. On WhatsApp, open the Meta AI chat, and if it does not show in your chat list yet, send it a single word so it does, then mute it for always from the chat's menu.

WhatsApp has two real controls worth knowing. The first is Restricted chat, which WhatsApp's help centre says is replacing the older Advanced chat privacy. Turn it on in a chat and nobody in that chat can use Meta AI features there, export the chat or have media saved to their gallery automatically. It needs the newest version of WhatsApp, works from your main phone, and in a group only an admin can turn it on. The second is the command /reset-ai, sent in your Meta AI chat, which wipes what Meta AI remembers from that chat, because deleting the chat on your phone does not delete Meta's copy.

Know one more thing before you chat with Meta AI at all. Since 16 December 2025, Meta uses what you say to Meta AI to personalise content and ads on Facebook and Instagram, outside the EU, the UK and South Korea, and there is no switch to stop it. Your WhatsApp chats with Meta AI only count if your WhatsApp account is added to the same Accounts Center as Facebook and Instagram, so keep it out of Accounts Center if you care about this.

This is the most searched question of the month and the answer is blunt. Instagram has no setting that hides AI-generated posts. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, said in July 2026 that he does not think Instagram should filter AI content out, and the company's plan is to label it instead. You will see an AI label on some posts, and in August 2026 Instagram renamed its AI creator label to AI-generated profile and said accounts that show AI-made people without it will get less reach. Instagram's own help page admits that not all AI content gets labelled.

So the only tools you have are your own signals. Open Your Algorithm from the icon at the top right of Reels or Explore, where it covers your feed too since June 2026, and remove the topics you are tired of. On any AI post or reel you do not want, tap the three dots and choose Not interested, and do it every time, because the feed learns from repeats.

If what bothers you is AI using your own photos, go to your profile menu, find Sharing and reuse, and turn off reuse for your posts and reels. Meta pulled Muse Image on Instagram, the feature that let people make AI images from public accounts, about three days after it launched in July 2026, but leaving reuse off costs you nothing.

With iOS 27 and macOS 27, Apple removed the one switch that turned Apple Intelligence off, so now you work through the features you dislike. Apple publishes its own guides for iPhone and Mac, and the paths are close but not identical. To get the old Siri back, turn Siri off in Settings, turn it on again, and choose Siri Classic when it asks. Notification summaries live in Notifications, Summarize Notifications, and Mail and Messages each have their own summary switch in their settings.

Writing help and Image Creation have no normal switch at all. They sit inside Screen Time, Content & Privacy Restrictions, Siri, the same place parents use to lock down a child's phone, and you block each Siri capability you do not want there. Image Playground can only be deleted as an app.

Now we come to the storage. Turning features off does not delete the AI models, and Apple gives no official way to remove them. Apple says they take up to 14 GB on newer Macs, while MacRumors measured about 20 GB on a Mac mini and one owner reported close to 30 GB. An open-source tool called RemoveMacAI removes the models on an Apple silicon Mac using Apple's own restriction settings, stops them downloading again, and can undo itself with one command. It is not from Apple, it is not notarised, and it breaks apps that use Apple's on-device AI. Its settings survive macOS updates, but a new macOS can need a new version of the tool, so back up first, run its dry run, and never use it on a work Mac your company manages.