Bye Bye Google AI / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Tired of Google AI results? There’s a fix for that.
- This free browser tool hides summaries you didn’t ask for.
- The extension comes from a trusted tech industry editor.
I have very mixed feelings about Google’s AI Overviews. On one hand, they sometimes provide tidbits of information without having to dig through web page after web page. On the other hand, as with all AIs (and some web pages), the information they provide can be wrong.
Also: How to get rid of AI Overviews in Google Search: 4 easy ways
Don’t get me started on how much traffic they’re sucking away from the sites whose data they’re hoovering up without giving back any traffic. If you want to know more about that, I did a whole detailed deep dive on web scrapers that expands on the topic.
Even worse, AI detector company Originality.ai did a survey of AI overview responses and determined that 10.4% of them are derived from AI-generated internet slop. Additionally, 52% of the citations used in AI overviews came from sources outside the top 100 search results, pages that Google’s own algorithm considers less authoritative.
I consider these results credible because Originality is one of the five companies in my AI content detector tests that scored 100% for accuracy.
Also: I found 5 AI content detectors that can correctly identify AI text 100% of the time
So, not only are the AI overviews siphoning off traffic, they’re doing so using more than dubious information from non-authoritative and potentially hallucinating AI sources.
If you could make AI Overviews go away, would you?
What if we could get into a time machine and travel back to 2022, before there was AI everything everywhere? What if we could just turn off those intrusive AI overviews Google seems insistent on plastering on top of all of our web searches?
Well, you can hide AI Overviews using a handy Chrome extension called Bye Bye Google AI. All you need to do is go to the Google Chrome Web Store and install the extension.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
It comes with a rather extensive set of options where you can select what you want hidden. For our purposes, the big win is “Hide AI Overviews.”
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
It’s not perfect, but it’s close. When you go to a page with an AI overview, the overview is displayed for a heartbeat, but then the extension hides it by modifying the page’s CSS. It would be nice if the DOM were modified in a hidden frame first, but I’m not sure that capability is available to extensions.
Even so, it’s pretty cool. Here’s a search without the extension turned on.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Here’s the exact same search with Bye Bye Google AI in action.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Here’s another search without the extension.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
And here it is with the extension active. You can also use the extension to turn off the “People also ask” section, but I left it on in this screenshot.
Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNET
Can you trust Bye Bye Google AI?
I wanted to mention a recent article we ran that recommended turning off all your Chrome extensions to safeguard your system. I still run extensions because they’re force multipliers and save me time. The article recommended only running extensions from known sources, and that’s good advice.
Also: Why you should delete your browser extensions right now — or do this to stay safe
Fortunately, the author of Bye Bye Google AI is Avram Piltch, a colleague who I’ve known for years. He’s a top-level editor at another tech site. It feels reasonable to trust that the code in the plugin is non-malicious.
Avram’s extension now has over 50,000 users. He told me, “I built the Bye Bye, Google AI extension to put the search back in Google search for those who want it. Google’s AI overviews operate on the faulty assumption that people are passive consumers of information who are willing to take any advice their computer spits out without questioning it.”
So there you go. This extension is a simple, easy fix for anyone annoyed by too much AI hype.
What do you think about Google’s AI Overviews? Have you found them helpful or frustrating in your own searches? Would you consider using a Chrome extension like Bye Bye Google AI to get rid of them, or do you prefer having AI summaries at the top of your results? Are you concerned about how much traffic Google might be diverting from the original websites that create the content?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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