From Google Chrome to Google Workspace, Google has been aggressively integrating AI into its apps and platforms — and Google Search is no exception. As long as you’ve looked anything up on Google since 2024, you’re already familiar with AI Overviews: the AI-generated summary that appears at the top of your results before any actual links.
The idea is to help you get answers more efficiently. But in practice, AI Overviews have been criticized for being inaccurate or confusing, for pushing real results further down the page, and for taking away traffic from the original sources(nyt vindue).
What’s more, if you’re signed into a Google account — which most people are — your searches and browsing activity, along with associated data like your location and device details, are tracked by default. That means this so-called convenience also comes at a cost to your privacy.
There isn’t a simple built-in off switch to disable AI Overviews on Google. But the good news is that there are a few effective workarounds with no external plugins or complicated setups required.
Use the Web filter
This is the quickest way to strip AI Overview from your results without changing any settings, though you’ll have to perform the same steps below for every new search.
1. Run a Google Search as usual.
2. Underneath the search bar, look for the tabs: All, Products, Images, News, Videos, etc. Select Web.
If you don’t see it among the tabs, select More → Web.
Your results will reload without AI Overview.
Add -AI to your search
This method relies on Google’s minus (NOT) operator to exclude a certain term from the results. Simply add -ai to the end of your query, like price of eggs -ai. Your search results should appear without AI Overviews, but this isn’t always guaranteed.
Append &udm=14 to URLs
Adding this parameter forces Google to automatically show web-only results. There are two ways to implement this:
Manually (one-off)
Search something on Google, and on the result page, add &udm=14 to the end of the URL in your browser’s address bar and hit Enter.
The new page will load without AI Overview, and you can bookmark this modified URL for future searches.
Save as a custom search engine on Chrome
This enables you to permanently add the &udm=14 parameter to every search on the Google Chrome browser, effectively bypassing AI Overview each time without having to do so manually. Note that this only applies to desktop devices.
1. On Google Chrome, click the vertical ellipsis ⋮ on the top-right and open Settings.
2. Go to Search engine and click Manage search engines and site search.
3. Under Site search, click Add.
4. Fill in the following details:
Name: Google Web
Shortcut: @web
URL with %s in place of query: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14
5. Click Add.
6. Click the vertical ellipsis ⋮ next to Google Web and select Make default.
Every default search you run from Chrome’s address bar now bypasses AI Overview and returns clean web results.
Your privacy deserves more than a workaround
Gemini, Google’s own AI, is deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem, including Gmail, Android, Google Docs, and Google Drive. This gives the company broad access to your data and raises suspicions about how that data can be used to fuel Google’s business model, including for targeted ads and AI training. For many, the lack of clear transparency and meaningful consent makes this integration feels more like surveillance.
AI Overviews are just another way for Google to push AI into your life by changing the default search experience itself. Not everyone is on board with this AI takeover, especially when it is built into services people use every day. If you agree, turning off AI Overviews is a start.
But if you’re serious about keeping your data out of Google’s AI systems, the most effective step is to reduce how much you rely on Google in the first place.
Next, you can switch to an encrypted ecosystem that believes privacy should be the default on the internet, not something you have to fight for. AI can be useful, but it should be optional, transparent, and built around consent. Our own AI assistant(nyt vindue) never logs or trains on your data. When it comes to search, you can choose a European search engine with opt-in AI features, or no AI at all.
Google is not the only company whose AI tools have implications for your privacy. Whether you’re using AI for work or in your daily life, it’s worth understanding exactly how your data is being handled — because the defaults of Big Tech rarely have your best interests in mind.
