You might have noticed that your smartphone, email inbox, and search engine have recently started trying to summarize, suggest, and complete your work for you. For many people, this doesn't feel like a helpful assistant; it feels like an unwanted intrusion. Now, thousands of people are turning to an unlikely source for help finding the off-switch: their local libraries.
Librarians in places like Maine and Philadelphia are hosting workshops titled Avoiding AI. These sessions aren't protests or anti-technology rallies. Instead, they are practical workshops where a host walks attendees through their own devices to show them how to disable specific AI features they find intrusive. The response has been overwhelming, with waiting lists stretching to dozens of people and hundreds of social media shares, signaling a massive, quiet frustration with how quickly these technologies are being woven into everyday consumer products.
Reclaiming the off-switch
Most of the AI tools appearing on your phone or search engine rely on large language models. These are computer programs trained on massive amounts of data that allow them to predict the next word in a sentence or summarize text. Because these companies want their products to be indispensable, they often bake these features directly into the core software of your device.
When a feature is built into your phone's operating system as a native tool, it can be difficult to find the settings that control it. The libraries hosting these workshops are essentially teaching digital hygiene. They show people how to dig into device settings to revoke permissions or disable predictive text and summary tools. They also share workarounds, like simple tricks for search engines that force them to return standard lists of results instead of AI-generated summaries. These are not secret exploits, but rather navigation skills for a digital landscape that is increasingly designed to make you use its AI features by default.
The popularity of these workshops reveals a deep tension between how tech companies want us to use computers and how we actually want to use them. The people attending these classes aren't necessarily opposed to the potential of the technology itself, such as in scientific or medical fields. Instead, they are expressing a desire for agency. They are tired of having features forced upon them that they did not ask for and do not want. These library workshops are a reminder that technology should serve the user's goals, not just the company's, and that it is perfectly reasonable to want the power to switch the automation off.
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