How to turn off AI overview on Google search

Google I/O introduced us to a bunch of cool AI-driven features along with announcing a major upgrade for Gemini. Among the notable announcements was Google’s AI overview which uses artificial intelligence to summarise your search query. While a lot of these answers may seem helpful, you might not want the AI overview to show up at the top of your page — or may even prefer the traditional way of searching up the topics of your choice. In both these cases, turning off Google’s AI-powered search results could prove to be helpful. If you’re not sure how to go about it, here’s what you need to do:

How does Google's AI overview feature work?

Before we go ahead though, it might be a good idea to understand just what the AI overviews feature is and how it works.  Google’s AI overview feature is trained on large databases that can help understand and generate human-like text results. Once a user types in their query, the feature analyses the text to determine whether or not it needs an AI-powered summary. If it does, you will receive a short paragraph displaying an overview of your topic, with answers that are fetched across multiple web page sources. 

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It tries to capture the most important details of the answer, along with perspectives and key points, based on what your question is. However, while it may seem to give you the desired response, several users have taken to social media and called out the feature for giving a negative, or even a ‘bizarre’ answer. There is, however, a way to switch this off; here are some steps to get started: 

Google AI overview feature: How to turn it off

While there’s no dedicated button on your browser to toggle Google’s AI-powered search results off or on, there are a few more steps to manually turn it off:  

On your laptop:

Step 1: Open Google Chrome and click on the labs icon at the top right corner of your screen.

Step 2: On clicking, you will be led to a page titled ‘Welcome to Search Labs.’

Step 3: Scroll to find an option that reads AI experiments > AI overviews and more.

Step 4: If the feature on your browser is switched on, you will find a toggle button to switch it off for yourself.

Step 5: Restart your Chrome browser once you are done, and you should be back to your regular search results page.

Once you disable this on your laptop, your smartphone browser, too, will have these changes replicated by default. 

How to get the AI overview feature for yourself

Alternatively, if you’re looking to switch this feature on and can’t seem to find it on your browser, you might have to manually look it up. Here is how to go about it: 

Step 1: Visit https://labs.google/ on your desktop or laptop browser.

Step 2: Scroll to find a listing that reads ‘Our Latest Experimental Tools and Technology.’ 

Step 3: Locate the option that reads ‘AI Overviews in Search’ and click on Get Started. 

Step 4: Once you click on this, you will be led to a page where you can switch the feature on for yourself. 

Step 5: Restart your browser before you experiment with the feature, and you’re all set! 

Once you do this, you will begin seeing AI summaries on your search results page. However, make sure to verify any information that comes to you via this feature. While some of the answers may be crafted using legitimate sources, you might find misleading results that could do more harm than good. The company seems to be building upon the feature, it may be a while before it improves based on user experiences and feedback.