If you’re not a fan of Google’s AI additions launched last year, there may be a handy fix: use specific words in the vernacular.
Being sweary may not be the most professional of things to do, but if you’re looking to remove Google’s AI overviews from search and just get a list of links — back like the old days — you may need to call on some of what some people call “bad words”.
That’s the discovery this week, as users flock to social to show how swearing in search shuts down the Google AI Overviews feature introduced last year, giving you a list of links back.
Australia saw AI Overviews added last year, and while some like it, not all do. There are tips to get around it, such as adding “-ai” to a search, though that mightn’t be quite as fun as using profanity in your search.
Simply put, Google doesn’t seem to like explicit and profane terms, so if you end up not liking the AI overviews, just add one of your favourite forms of profanity in there, and you should get the answer you want in a list of links. It won’t exactly be the same, something we found in our testing, but it could switch some of the AI functionality off, at least for the moment.