Breakup with big tech: Disable Google's Gemini in Gmail and Google Workspace

                February 18, 2025

            Breakup with big tech: Disable Google's Gemini in Gmail and Google Workspace

            Breakup with big tech is a series of posts about finding alternatives to huge tech corporations and resisting the manufactured consent being coerced onto us as these corporations enable various features, especially around the latest “AI” hype, as best we can.
Since many workplaces and educational institutions use Google workspace, I figured I’d start with the obscure steps needed to take to disable Google’s AI feature as best as possible. This can be done without any special administrator capabilities or permissions on your account, but it does mean disabling some other “smart” features. Try it out and see if you actually miss them.
Step 1. Go to Gmail’s general settings by clicking the cog in the top right hand corner. Scroll down until you see the “Smart features” checkbox. Uncheck it. You will get a popup to reload Gmail, click the “turn off and reload” button to continue.
Step 2. At the same general settings screen as in step 1, click the “Manage Workspace smart feature settings”. This will open a larger popup with a few options.
The Gmail general settings screen. A red arrow points towards the checkbox labelled “smart features” and is annotated with 1. Uncheck this option. Below it is another red arrow pointing towards a button labelled “Manage Workspace smart feature settings” with the annotation 2. Click this button.
Pop up shown when unchecking the “smart features” box in Gmail’s general settings. It requests reloading Gmail, warning that any other unsaved changes to the settings page will be lost. Classic google product experience. There is a cancel button and a blue “Turn off and reload” button at the bottom of the pop up.
Step 3. Disable Google Workspace smart features in the big pop up by toggling both options “off” and clicking save.
“Google Workspace smart features” pop up showing two toggles for “Smart features in Google Workspace” and “Smart features in other products”. Each toggle has a red arrow pointing towards it with a “Toggle this off” annotation. The blue save button at the bottom of the popup has a red arrow pointing towards it with the annotation “Click this button”.
The pop up should look like this if you choose to access it again:
“Google Workspace smart features” pop up showing two toggles for “Smart features in Google Workspace” and “Smart features in other products”. Each toggle is grey and has an x over the circle, indicating the features are set to off.
Please send me a reply if anything about this process is unclear or changes and I will update accordingly.
Let me now what big tech breakup you’d like to see next.
Stay cool.

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