Not everyone is a fan of the AI Overview that appears at the top of Google search results these days. Some users have even taken to Googling how to turn the feature off, to which the search engine answers that you can’t. Unless you want to start swearing at it.
The “curse to disable Google AI” trend has been making the rounds on social media recently, with users claiming that adding a curse word to your search query will disable the AI Overview in the results. Ars Technica decided to put this theory to the test, and they report that it really works. The publication entered the phrase “how do you turn off [adjective] Google AI results” into the search bar, using a collection of curse word adjectives as well as PG adjectives like “lousy.” They found that no AI Overview appeared in the results any time they used a curse word, but the gentler adjectives always got the AI.
Ars speculates that this may be because Google’s AI system Gemini is programmed to avoid swearing if possible, so it doesn’t want to go near search queries with such words. They also reminded users to be careful if you want to use this as a regular workaround, because adding swear words can alter the web link results particularly if you don’t enable SafeSearch.