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  • Hacker News
  • Much needed list. On the browser front, I recommend giving a try to alternatives like Zen or Helium, which are Firefox and Chromium based respectively.

    For AI buttons that specifically bug you, content blockers like uBlock Origin are especially helpful to zap them out of the page.

    by astudentinearth
  • Thank you, I've added these browser suggestions.
    by jessamyn
  • Good list! Removing as much as possible all AI and surveillance features, then carefully adding back the very few I want is the way I roll.
    by mark_l_watson
  • So the next iteration of surveillance features is to silently double down on users that turn off surveillance, because why would they do that unless they have something to hide? Better flag this user for extra super-secret surveillance and an immediate notification to authorities.
    by Isamu
  • This reminds me of the ole days of cleaning up preinstalled Windows of bloatware. Some clean Linux distro on desktop is the only path open to human-first tech.
    by high_5
  • Unfortunately doesn't tell me how make Rovo go away.
    by happosai
  • My heart bleeds for Rovo’s product managers. They must also see that nobody actually wants or needs or even likes Rovo.
    by stephantul
  • The Jira AI buttons? I block them with an adblocker
    by lbrito
  • Recently bothered by the Amazon Alexa for Shopping thing that slides out constantly and can’t be turned off, I found this Chrome extension.

    https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/adios-alexa-for-sho...

    by dceddia
  • Thank you, I've added this suggestion for Chrome/Firefox
    by jessamyn
  • Oh! The joy of driving a 2010 car with 60,000 miles on it knowing it's more likely than not I've never have to experience CarPlay/Siri/etc.
    by bookofjoe
  • Worst my external navigator does is ask me to update maps some times. Rest of the time it stays away from my way...
    by Ekaros
  • > go to System Settings – Apple Intelligence & Siri. Select About Siri, Dictation & Privacy… near the end of the page, turn off apps you don’t want Siri to learn from

    This is very user unfriendly.

    by thih9
  • Hello -- this is mine! There's a short URL: https://NoToAI.org If people have suggestions I'll add them.
    by jessamyn
  • funny to see you here rather than mefi jessamyn. thanks for everything!
    by devindotcom
  • Thanks for putting this together, incredible resource.

    Wanted to suggest &udm=14 added to Google search URLs to omit the AI overview and other frills. Personally, I use Chrome's search engine settings to add that param automatically when searching from the browser url bar. I also came across this: https://udm14.com/

    by evnp
  • Switch to linux, that's what I did.

    Literally. The endless waves of companies forcing LLMs down our throats and into our workflows drove me off the mac. And windows is worse, which leaves linux.

    by kennywinker
  • Which Linux phone do you prefer?
    by jessamyn
  • The article missed a few obvious ones:

    LibreWolf and Waterfox rip out the AI features with prejudice. I don't know anyone who uses Zen or Helium (and haven't heard of the latter).

    If you have an iPhone 14 or older, you're safe from any AI features and have legacy Siri.

    LibreOffice instead of Office

    Linux instead of Windows (and I will not be entertaining "but end users won't do that" - because that is false. Linux market share is growing year over year)

    Codeberg instead of GitHub

    VSCodium instead of VSCode

    by VCFundedGenYer
  • Thanks for suggesting more mainstream alt-browsers. This article isn't about avoiding all AI everywhere so much as it is for people who want to turn the intrusive AI off in the things they are already using. There are even more things that could be in this including Windows registry editing, Linux, and all the great FOSS options but it's mostly not for that. I do have an older iPhone and I agree, it's sort of great to have legacy Siri.
    by jessamyn
  • Such a cool guide to such a bizarre problem we live in…

    Companies forcing features that nobody wants, but that are also expensive to operate and cost real money to run? Market can definitely stay irrational for long.

    by rad-b
  • Alternative hypothesis: people do gradually use these features, but HN became a weird anti-AI bubble for some reason.

    I mean, many of the features had previous pre-AI attempts. They all sucked much more. This is the first time they have a remote chance of working (but in many cases, timidity or cheapening out is still making them barely usable - which is why 99% of the cases it's still much, much better to throw one of the three SOTA LLMs at the app to operate it (or on its data) from the outside).

    by TeMPOraL
  • Many people do like AI tools and use them regularly. ChatGPT has nearly a billion weekly active users.

    It's just that another group of people absolutely hates the idea of AI and wants it to go away.

    by Legend2440
  • I really do wonder if the market is being irrational or if we just cannot see what they are

    I suspect that many people dislike AI but are begrudgingly using it. I would put money very few people are completely avoiding it. It's very hard to avoid now anyways.

    Maybe the AI company strategy is really just "make it so invasive in life it's so difficult to avoid and expensive enough to revert that companies and governments will never go back anyways"

    by bluefirebrand
  • we’ve reached the stage of market consolidation where corporations dictate consumer behavior, not vice versa
    by uhohherewegoaga
  • > Companies forcing features that nobody wants

    Literally every day that I browse HN I hear people complain about others' use of LLMs. How can you say "nobody wants" when it's used so much to elicit endless complaints?

    by BeetleB
  • Well this is why, as an enthusiastic AI user, even I usually want to disable intrusive AI!

    If it's popping up in some random product I don't pay for I can only assume it's such a shitty model that it's probably not worth talking to.

    (Exception: my bank has replaced its shitty phone tree with an AI chatbot. This is faster and the model has a "transfer to a human" tool. It's perfectly capable of following its playbook, determining that I need a human, and putting me in touch with one. So actually I started with "now I've gotta debase myself by talking to a fucking 32B Chinese LLM" but ended with "oh that was great actually").

    by bjackman
  • Nobody using it is actually the ideal outcome. AI features are added, at no additional cost to the consumer, to extract money from investors. If customers began using the product, this feature would actually start having an ongoing cost.
    by freeone3000
  • I recently discovered that you need to have Siri enabled for Apple CarPlay. I expect we're going to see a lot of this where when you disable the AI functionality the devs won't have put in fallback states and you'll be effectively locked out. With CarPlay for instance there is no reason that I shouldn't be able to listen to my music or use the map without Siri. But things like responding to texts does rely on Siri, so just gate that piece. It is rather unfortunate.
    by dinkleberg
  • I'm not excited for iOS 27. I tried out the beta and decided to reset my phone to get my back to iOS 26. I find the new Siri is far worse and slower to respond, if that's even possible. It also adds new features that are hard to remove. I only use it for timers and playing music and the current Siri is just fine for that imo.
    by LetsGetTechnicl