Google now lets account holders turn off artificial intelligence features with a single setting, but the switch disables more than Gemini alone. According to CNET's report on the feature, users who opt out lose several AI-driven capabilities across Google's products — a trade-off the company does not spell out in full detail at the moment of toggling.

The setting exists inside the Google Account privacy controls. When a user disables AI features there, the immediate effect covers Google's generative AI surfaces, but the change ripples into other tools that quietly depend on machine intelligence in the background.

CNET walked through what actually disappears. Among the affected features are AI-powered capabilities tied to photos, search summaries, and other assistant-like functions that Google has layered into its core services over the past several years. Users who expect only to remove chatbot answers often discover that convenience features they rely on daily stop working as well.

The distinction matters for two very different audiences. For everyday users, the setting offers a privacy-focused way to pull personal data out of Google's AI training and inference pipelines. For site owners, publishers, and search professionals, it signals how deeply Google has woven generative AI into its consumer-facing products — and how much of the company's default experience now assumes AI is switched on.

Google has framed the controls as a matter of user choice rather than a product rollback. The company has not removed AI from its services; it has given accounts a way to step outside the AI-enhanced layer. That means the default experience — including the AI summaries and assistive features that increasingly shape how people interact with Google Search — remains in place for the vast majority of users who never touch the setting.

For search practitioners, the practical takeaway is straightforward. Opt-out rates for this kind of setting historically run low, so traffic models built around AI-augmented search surfaces, including summaries and assistive answers, should assume those features stay active for most users. What the toggle does provide is a cleaner test environment: professionals who want to compare AI-on and AI-off versions of Google's products can now do so at the account level.

CNET's account also makes clear that the feature set affected by the switch is broad enough that users should review it before opting out. Some of the lost conveniences are subtle — functions that many people no longer think of as "AI" at all, because Google has normalized them inside everyday tools.

Whether adoption of the opt-out grows, and whether Google expands or narrows the list of features the switch disables, will show how much appetite users actually have for an AI-free Google experience. Watch the account privacy settings page and Google's feature documentation for changes to that list.