This Chrome Extension Hides Google's AI Junk

It's hard to escape AI these days. Apple just made Apple Intelligence opt out, and Google Workspace users are now seeing big, hard-to-dismiss Gemini buttons all over their apps. The world's biggest tech companies are doing their best to sell you on a generative AI future, but even when you can't turn AI off, there are steps you can take to fight back.

Even outside of Workspace, Google is one of the most egregious AI pushers around. The company has tried to push its Gemini AI in almost all of its properties, even though it's shown inaccurate search results recommending everything from eating rocks to adding glue to pizza. Even if you have no interest in AI search results, you'll still be forced to see elements of Google's Gemini all over Gmail and its other web apps. If that gets your goat, no worries—you can use Hide Gemini, a Chrome extension that hides Google Gemini elements from various Google sites—to pretend you live in the good older days of 2020.

Hide Gemini removes the Ask Gemini button from Gmail and uses CSS to hide other egregious Gemini elements across Google's various sites, even the dreaded AI Overview box. Once you install it, the extension starts taking effect immediately. With these types of extensions, there's sometimes a worry that they may negatively impact the functionality of your service. An extension that blocks one element could sometimes inadvertently stop you from accessing other essential features. Fortunately, there are no such side effects associated with Hide Gemini. Since it uses CSS blocking, it merely hides unwanted AI elements without affecting any other functionality. 

Note that this extension, just like AI, isn't magic. It only hides persistent AI elements (such as the aforementioned Ask Gemini button), but not temporary promotional ones. If you've never used Gemini, you may see a Try Gemini button, which this extension does not hide. The developer says this is to avoid causing compatibility issues. Similarly, it doesn't block the "Help me write" prompt that may appear in Google Docs while you're working on a document. These minor limitations seem reasonable to me, and I'm happy to recommend Hide Gemini. It makes Google products a lot less annoying to use, even if it doesn't block the AI itself so much as makes it invisible.

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