How to turn off AI in your Google Docs

It happened to me: I opened a Google Doc to write an article, and I was immediately confronted with a text box inviting me to “write with Gemini.” I looked for a button to wipe away the garish AI screen, but I couldn’t find it. It made me angry.

Instead of writing the article I was supposed to be working on, I’m now writing about how to get the AI ​​popups off your Google Docs screen since it took me some time to figure it out. Don’t mention it.

The first solution is quite simple:

• Click on ‘Gemini’ in the top menu bar above your document.
• From the drop-down menu, select ‘Preferences in the bottom bar’.
• You can choose to disable that bottom bar, which will make the AI ​​box at the bottom of your screen disappear.

Full disclosure: I was so furious when I started looking for “bottom bar preferences” that I initially missed it completely. Instead, I clicked “Ask Something Else” and asked Gemini to help me remove herself from my life. AI may not be human, but Gemini seemed to have some kind of survival instinct because it told me to click the ‘X’ icon. Gemini doesn’t take that away. It simply closed the conversation where I asked how it could turn itself off. Suspicious!

Other aggrieved Google Docs users have reported features I haven’t come across yet, such as a “help me write” function that floats above your cursor as you work. This seems like something that would upset me, so it’s probably worth nipping that in the bud before it’s too late. Benjamin Franklin ever said“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (He was talking about fire safety. I’m talking about product design.)

Rather than disabling each individual AI feature, like a game of whac-o-mole, we can disable ‘smart features’ in our Google workspace via Gmail.

• First, navigate to your Gmail inbox.
• From there, find the gear icon for Settings and click on it.
• Then click ‘View all settings’ at the top of the menu. (But while you’re here, be sure to pick a fun theme for your inbox. Would a little whimsy kill you?)

• After clicking “View all settings,” scroll about halfway down the page to “Google Workspace smart features,” then click “Manage Workspace smart features settings.”

• Here you’ll be presented with two options: one that lets you disable smart features in Google Workspace (like those annoying Gemini popups in Google Docs), and one that applies to other smart features (which I personally find less annoying). I only disabled the first option, but if for some reason you’re annoyed by Gmail automatically creating calendar events for your flights, here’s how to fix that.

You should now be protected from annoying Gemini pop-ups disrupting your writing process in Google Docs. You can rest peacefully.