You can turn off more AI than you probably think, and less than you’d like. Apple Intelligence goes away with one tap. Microsoft’s Copilot takes a separate switch in every app. Google’s AI Overviews can’t be turned off at all, and Google says so in plain language on its own help page.

The essentials:

• The off switches are real, but scattered. There’s no master control. Expect to visit several settings screens across your phone, your computer, and your Google account.
• A few features have no off switch, by design. Google classes AI Overviews as a core part of Search and states that core features “cannot be turned off”. Samsung says the same about parts of Galaxy AI.
• Switching AI off sometimes costs you something else. Microsoft’s fallback method also disables text predictions in Word and automatic image descriptions, which you may want to keep.

Every path below comes from the company’s own documentation, linked so you can check it, and read on 16 August 2026. Menus move. If yours looks different, that’s exactly what the section on settings coming back is about.

Why does AI keep turning itself on?

Because these features arrive already switched on, usually inside an ordinary update you installed for other reasons. Nobody agreed to anything. The update just landed and there was a new button in the toolbar.

There’s a second reason that’s easier to prove and rarely mentioned: the off switch often ships later than the feature does. Microsoft’s support page on turning off Copilot notes that the Enable Copilot checkbox only became available “as of March 13, 2025”, and only from certain app versions onward. People who wanted Copilot out of Word before that date weren’t missing the setting. There wasn’t one.

The controls also move around. Google’s help page for AI Overviews currently opens with a notice that the company is “updating settings for Google Search services” and warns that the settings it describes “may not match your current experience”. When a company tells you its own documentation might be out of date, that’s fair warning that the menu you found last year may have been reorganized since.

What can you actually turn off?

A “yes” below means a real off switch exists. A “no” means the company itself says there isn’t one.

Feature	Can you turn it off?	Where
Apple Intelligence on iPhone, iPad, Mac	Yes, one switch	Settings › Apple Intelligence & Siri
Copilot in desktop Word, Excel, PowerPoint	Yes, one checkbox per app	Windows: File › Options › Copilot. Mac: app menu › Preferences › Authoring and Proofing Tools › Copilot
Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint on phone or web	No	Microsoft says it can’t be turned off there
The Copilot app in Windows 11	Yes, uninstall it	Settings › Apps › Installed apps
Google AI Overviews in Search	No	Use the Web filter for plain text links
Smart features in Gmail, Chat, Meet	Yes, but all or nothing	Gmail Settings › General
Galaxy AI on Samsung phones	Mostly, feature by feature	Settings › Galaxy AI

How do you turn off Apple Intelligence?

Apple makes this the easiest of the three. One switch covers the whole suite: open Settings, tap Apple Intelligence & Siri, and tap the button next to Apple Intelligence to turn it off. The same path works on an iPad, and on a Mac through System Settings.

Two things to know. First, turning it off gets you storage back, because Apple removes the on-device models when you do. Those models are the part that runs the features on the device itself rather than on a server, and Apple lists 7 GB of free storage as a requirement for them. Turn the feature on again later and your device downloads them again.

Second, you don’t have to go all or nothing. If you like the writing suggestions but want the AI image tools gone, Apple keeps per-feature blocks in an odd place: Settings › Screen Time › Content & Privacy Restrictions › Intelligence & Siri, where Writing Tools, Image Creation, and Intelligence Extensions each get their own Allow or Don’t Allow. Intelligence Extensions is Apple’s name for connections to outside AI providers, like ChatGPT. It’s all designed as a parental control, which is why it’s tucked away there, but it works fine on your own phone.

How do you turn off Copilot in Windows and Office?

Microsoft splits Copilot into two different products that people constantly mistake for one. The Copilot app in Windows and Copilot inside Office apps have separate controls, and dealing with one does nothing to the other.

One caveat before you start: Microsoft’s instructions cover personal Microsoft accounts. On a work or school account, your IT administrator may control these settings instead.

For the Windows app, uninstall it: Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Copilot, open the … menu, choose Uninstall.

For Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Windows, go to File › Options › Copilot, clear the Enable Copilot checkbox, click OK, then close and reopen the app. On a Mac the route is different: open the app menu, then Preferences › Authoring and Proofing Tools › Copilot. Outlook is the odd one out and uses a “Turn on Copilot” toggle in its own settings — except in classic Outlook on Windows, where Microsoft says there is “currently no estimated date” for when a switch will exist at all.

Now the part that catches everyone. That checkbox covers one app on one device. Turning it off in Word leaves Excel alone. Turning it off on your laptop leaves your desktop alone. Microsoft also notes that switching it off on a shared computer switches it off for everyone who uses that machine, which matters if it’s a family PC.

And if you use Office on your phone or in a browser, there’s nothing to switch. Microsoft states it directly: “You can’t turn off Copilot in the iOS, Android, or web versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.”

How do you get AI Overviews out of Google Search?

You can’t remove them, and Google is refreshingly blunt about why. Its help page says AI Overviews are “a core Google Search feature, like knowledge panels” and that features of that kind “cannot be turned off”.

What Google offers instead is the Web filter. Run your search as normal, then pick Web from the row of tabs under the search box, sometimes hidden behind More. You get a results page of plain text links with no AI Overview on it.

One piece of very common advice simply doesn’t work. You’ll see people recommend switching off “AI in Search” in Search Labs. That setting is real, but on that same help page Google offers the Web filter as the way to see results without an AI Overview, and separately describes Labs as its “testbed for innovation” for early experiments. Opting out of the experiments doesn’t touch AI Overviews, which stopped being an experiment a long time ago. If you tried it and the overviews stayed put, nothing went wrong on your end.

How do you turn off Gmail’s smart features?

Gmail is one place where you do get a switch. In Gmail on a computer, open Settings › See all settings › General, scroll to the smart features section, and turn off smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet.

If you’re in the UK, the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or Japan, Google says these settings are off by default already, so check before you go hunting. And read the last section before you flip anything, because this particular switch takes more with it than you’d expect.

What about Android phones?

Android is the messiest case, because what you can turn off depends on who made your phone rather than on Google alone.

Samsung is the most clearly documented. Open Settings, tap Galaxy AI, and you get a list of AI features you can switch off one at a time. On some models you tap Advanced features first, then Galaxy AI or Awesome Intelligence. Samsung also puts a single switch called Process data only on device on that same screen, which keeps the cloud-based features from sending your data off the phone instead of removing them. Samsung advises restarting the phone afterward so the changes take effect.

Samsung is also unusually honest about the limits, in wording that echoes Google’s: some AI features “may be integrated into the system and cannot be disabled”. If you’re on a phone from another manufacturer, look for a similar AI section in Settings, and expect the same mixed result.

Why does the setting come back?

The setting was never global to begin with. Microsoft’s checkbox is per app and per device, so “it came back” usually means you opened a different app, or sat down at a different computer.

New features also arrive with their own new switches. Turning off today’s AI feature doesn’t pre-emptively turn off the one shipping in November, and that one will arrive switched on too.

And the menus get reorganized. Google’s warning that its own documented settings “may not match your current experience” is a company saying out loud that the off switch has moved.

The practical answer is unglamorous: check again after a big update, rather than assuming a setting stayed where you left it.

What do you give up by turning AI off?

This is the part that will actually annoy you.

Microsoft’s documentation is the clearest example. If your Office apps are too old to have the Enable Copilot checkbox, the fallback is to change your account privacy settings. That works, but Microsoft warns it also turns off suggested replies in Outlook, text predictions in Word, PowerPoint Designer, and automatic alt text for images. Alt text matters more than it sounds: it’s the description a screen reader uses to explain an image to someone who can’t see it.

Google bundles things the same way. Its smart features setting covers four things at once, and the help page states that turning it off means you can’t use any of them in Gmail, Chat, and Meet. Some have nothing to do with chatbots — the first item on Google’s list is the automatic sorting of your mail into the Primary, Social, and Promotions tabs.

So the sensible move is to turn off the specific feature that bothers you, and only reach for the big bundled switch if the specific one doesn’t exist. You’ll keep the small conveniences you’d actually miss. It’s the same instinct we’d apply to the AI features that do save real time at work: keep what earns its place, drop what doesn’t.

To say it plainly: wanting AI out of your tools isn’t technophobia. A feature you didn’t choose, that summarizes your messages and sometimes gets them wrong, is a fair thing to switch off. If your concern is less about clutter and more about where your information goes, that’s a separate question with separate settings, and we cover it in what happens to your data when you use AI tools.

More on staying in control in our AI safety section.

Frequently asked questions

Can you turn off Google's AI Overviews completely?

No. Google's own help page is unusually direct about this: it calls AI Overviews "a core Google Search feature, like knowledge panels" and states that such features "cannot be turned off". What Google offers instead is the Web filter, which you select after running a search to get a page of plain text links with no AI Overview on it. You may have seen advice to switch off "AI in Search" in Search Labs. That's a real setting, but Google describes Labs as its testbed for experiments, and AI Overviews stopped being an experiment a long time ago.

Does turning off Apple Intelligence free up storage?

Yes. Apple says that when you turn Apple Intelligence off, the on-device models are removed from your device. Those models are what let the features run without sending everything to a server, and Apple lists 7 GB of free storage as a requirement for running them, so switching the feature off gives real space back. If you turn it on again later, the device has to download them again.

Why does Copilot still show up after I turned it off?

Usually because you turned it off in fewer places than you think. Microsoft's Enable Copilot checkbox applies to one app on one device, so switching it off in Word does nothing for Excel, and switching it off on your laptop does nothing for your desktop. On top of that, the Windows Copilot app and Copilot inside Office are separate things with separate controls, so uninstalling the app leaves the one in Word untouched.

Is there a single setting that turns off all AI at once?

There isn't. Every company handles this differently, and even within one company the controls are scattered. Apple comes closest with a single Apple Intelligence switch. Microsoft needs one checkbox per app per device plus a separate uninstall for the Windows app. Google splits it across Search and Gmail. Plan on visiting several settings screens rather than looking for one master switch.

Does turning off an AI feature stop the company using my data?

Not necessarily, and it's worth keeping the two ideas separate. A feature toggle controls what appears on your screen. What a company may do with your information is governed by different settings, usually in your account's privacy or activity section. Google's smart features setting is one of the few that openly ties the two together, since it's described as permission to use your content to personalize those apps. We cover the data side in our guide to what happens to your data when you use AI tools.