You Can’t Turn Off Google AI Overviews, but There Are Workarounds

By now, you’re probably already well-acquainted with Google Search AI Reviewsthose AI-curated summaries that now appear at the top of your Google search results after you ask a question.

Initially, the only way AI Overviews would appear was if you signed up for Research laboratories, allowing you to participate in Google’s latest AI experiments. AI-generated resumes are now distributed to everyone in the US.

Take a look: Google’s AI overview: what it is and why it’s getting things wrong

If you don’t see AI Overviews on Google yet, it’s just a matter of time.

While you may appreciate that Google does even more of the heavy lifting when you’re doing research, you may not want an AI-generated summary to be the first thing you see when you use Google Search. on Google Gemini the generative AI model powers these generalizations but Gemini — like AI right now — is not always accurate.

AI Overviews has already offered eating pizza with glue. As well as drinking urine to quickly expel kidney stones.

So is there a way to turn off AI reviews? The answer is more complicated than you think. For more, Here’s what else Google said at its Google I/O conferenceincluding what to expect in the future Android 15.

What are Google Search AI Reviews?

AI reviews are generated by AI answers to questions you ask on Google Search. Google said that starting May 14, AI Overviews results will start appearing at the top of Google searches when Google’s search engines determine that these types of AI-generated answers can quickly provide useful information.

For example, if you typed “What was the shortest war in history” into a Google search, you might see something about the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, thanks to AI Overviews. Below the AI-generated summary, you’ll see links to all the resources used, which you can click on to check the websites from which the information was extracted.

If you scroll down, you might see the featured snippet you’re used to seeing in Google search, as well as those “people also ask” sections, Quora and Reddit Q&A boxes, relevant videos, and website links.

Who has access to AI reviews?

Google began testing AI Overviews in 2023 with a small group of people who signed up to Search Labs, where Google experiments with possible search capabilities. During this last one Google I/O conference, Google announced that it will roll out AI Overviews to hundreds of millions of users in the US, with other countries coming soon. Google expects to provide AI Overviews to over a billion people by the end of this year.

Is there a way to turn off Google Search AI Overviews?

Now to the important question: Do you have any way to turn off AI Overviews in your search results?

Unfortunately, you can’t go into Google or Chrome settings and disable the feature.

For those of us at CNET who tried, AI Overviews is now off Research laboratoriesand if nothing else, all we can do is improve the AI ​​reviews to cover more search topics when we include it in Labs.

On the Labs page, Google said “Spinning [the AI Overviews and more experiments] off does not disable AI reviews in Search outside Labs.”

If you enable the experimental setting for AI reviews, you can ask more complex questions in Google searches and get more complete AI reviews. You can ask something like “Create a 5-day meal plan that includes blueberries” and you’ll get an AI-generated answer at the top of GooglesSearch. Great for people who like blueberries, but bad for people who just aren’t into AI.

Earlier this year, looks like there was a way to turn off AI reviews in the search results, but is now included in the results. So, is there another way to get rid of AI reviews?

You can’t turn off AI Overviews, but you can do this…

Google may not give us an obvious way to turn off AI reviews in Google Search, but there are some workarounds.

The first solution, whether you’re on a mobile device or a computer, is yes use the Web tab that appears at the top of Google search results. If you don’t see it – it should be there with the All, News and Images tabs – scroll left or right until you see it. Initially, you’ll still see an AI summary at the top, but this allows you to quickly switch to a more traditional link-only search. If you’re on a computer, there’s a way to do it make the web tab the default option when you use Google Search online.

Read more: Google Search without ads or AI: How to get only links in your results

Second solution is yes use a web browser other than Chrome. We didn’t get the AI ​​reviews for requests in Safari and Firefox that we did in Chrome. Unfortunately, this only works on your computer, not on mobile.

The third solution, which also only works on your computer, is yes use this Hide the Google AI Overviews extension for Chrome. If you’re a Chrome user and don’t want to use another browser, but also don’t want AI Overviews, this extension removes all AI-generated summaries from your Google search results.

For more, here they are all 13 Google AI toolsincluding an interesting AI tool for Gmail.

Editor’s note: CNET used an AI engine to help create several dozen stories that were labeled accordingly. The note you’re reading is attached to articles that deal essentially with the topic of AI, but were created entirely by our expert editors and writers. For more see our AI Policy.