If you don’t go searching for AI services, they’ll find you all the same. Every major tech company feels a moral obligation not just to develop an AI assistant, integrated chatbot, or autonomous agent, but to bake it into their existing mainstream products and forcibly activate it for tens of millions of users. Here are just a few examples from the last six months:

• Microsoft is forcibly turning compatible Windows PCs into “AI PCs”, and automatically installing and activating Copilot for anyone with Microsoft 365 desktop apps.
• Google activated Gemini for all U.S. Chrome users, cranked its browser functionality to the max, aggressively expanded the reach of AI Overviews in search results, and baked a whole suite of AI features into its online services (Gmail, Google Docs, and others).
• Apple integrated its own Apple Intelligence (conveniently sharing the AI acronym) into the latest OS versions across all device types and most of its native apps.
• Meta added AI translations and a Meta AI chat to WhatsApp, while simultaneously banning third-party chatbots in the messaging app as of January 15, 2026.

On the flip side, geeks have rushed to build their own “personal Jarvises” by renting VPS instances or hoarding Mac minis to run the OpenClaw AI agent. Unfortunately, OpenClaw’s security issues with default settings turned out to be so massive that it’s already been dubbed the biggest cybersecurity threat of 2026.

Beyond the sheer annoyance of having something shoved down your throat, this AI epidemic brings some very real practical risks and headaches. AI assistants hoover up every bit of data they can get their hands on, parsing the context of the websites you visit, analyzing your saved documents, reading through your chats, and so on. This gives AI companies an unprecedentedly intimate look into every user’s life.

A leak of this data during a cyberattack — whether from the AI provider’s servers or from the cache on your own machine — could be catastrophic. These assistants can see and cache everything you can, including data usually tucked behind multiple layers of security: banking info, medical diagnoses, private messages, and other sensitive intel. We took a deep dive into how this plays out when we broke down the issues with the AI-powered Copilot+ Recall system, which Microsoft also planned to force-feed to everyone. On top of that, AI can be a total resource hog, eating up RAM, GPU cycles, and storage, which often leads to a noticeable hit to system performance.

For those who want to sit out the AI storm and avoid these half-baked, rushed-to-market neural network assistants, we’ve put together a quick guide on how to kill the AI in popular apps and services.

How to disable AI in Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Workspace

Google’s AI assistant features in Mail and Docs are lumped together under the umbrella of “smart features”. In addition to the large language model, this includes various minor conveniences, like automatically adding meetings to your calendar when you receive an invite in Gmail. Unfortunately, it’s an all-or-nothing deal: you have to disable all of the “smart features” to get rid of the AI.

To do this, open Gmail, click the Settings (gear) icon, and then select See all settings. On the General tab, scroll down to Google Workspace smart features. Click Manage Workspace smart feature settings and toggle off two options: Smart features in Google Workspace and Smart features in other Google products. We also recommend unchecking the box next to Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet on the same general settings tab. You’ll need to restart your Google apps afterward (which usually happens automatically).

How to disable AI Overviews in Google Search

You can kill off AI Overviews in search results on both desktops and smartphones (including iPhones), and the fix is the same across the board. The simplest way to bypass the AI overview on a case-by-case basis is to append -ai to your search query — for example, how to make pizza -ai. Unfortunately, this method occasionally glitches, causing Google to abruptly claim it found absolutely nothing for your request.

If that happens, you can achieve the same result by switching the search results page to Web mode. To do this, select the Web filter immediately below the search bar — you’ll often find it tucked away under the More button.

A more radical solution is to jump ship to a different search engine entirely. For instance, DuckDuckGo not only tracks users less and shows little ads, but it also offers a dedicated AI-free search — just bookmark the search page at noai.duckduckgo.com.

How to disable AI features in Chrome

Chrome currently has two types of AI features baked in. The first communicates with Google’s servers and handles things like the smart assistant, an autonomous browsing AI agent, and smart search. The second handles locally more utility-based tasks, such as identifying phishing pages or grouping browser tabs. The first group of settings is labeled AI mode, while the second contains the term Gemini Nano.

To disable them, type chrome://flags into the address bar and hit Enter. You’ll see a list of system flags and a search bar; type “AI” into that search bar. This will filter the massive list down to about a dozen AI features (and a few other settings where those letters just happen to appear in a longer word). The second search term you’ll need in this window is “Gemini“.

After reviewing the options, you can disable the unwanted AI features — or just turn them all off — but the bare minimum should include:

• AI Mode Omnibox entrypoint
• AI Entrypoint Disabled on User Input
• Omnibox Allow AI Mode Matches
• Prompt API for Gemini Nano
• Prompt API for Gemini Nano with Multimodal Input

Set all of these to Disabled.

How to disable AI features in Firefox

While Firefox doesn’t have its own built-in chatbots and hasn’t (yet) tried to force upon users agent-based features, the browser does come equipped with smart-tab grouping, a sidebar for chatbots, and a few other perks. Generally, AI in Firefox is much less “in your face” than in Chrome or Edge. But if you still want to pull the plug, you’ve two ways to do it.

The first method is available in recent Firefox releases — starting with version 148, a dedicated AI Controls section appeared in the browser settings, though the controls are currently a bit sparse. You can use a single toggle to completely Block AI enhancements, shutting down AI features entirely. You can also specify whether you want to use On-device AI by downloading small local models (currently just for translations) and configure AI chatbot providers in sidebar, choosing between Anthropic Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Google Gemini, and Le Chat Mistral.

The second path — for older versions of Firefox — requires a trip into the hidden system settings. Type about:config into the address bar, hit Enter, and click the button to confirm that you accept the risk of poking around under the hood.

A massive list of settings will appear along with a search bar. Type “ML” to filter for settings related to machine learning.

To disable AI in Firefox, toggle the browser.ml.enabled setting to false. This should disable all AI features across the board, but community forums suggest this isn’t always enough to do the trick. For a scorched-earth approach, set the following parameters to false (or selectively keep only what you need):

• ml.chat.enabled
• ml.linkPreview.enabled
• ml.pageAssist.enabled
• ml.smartAssist.enabled
• ml.enabled
• ai.control.translations
• tabs.groups.smart.enabled
• urlbar.quicksuggest.mlEnabled

This will kill off chatbot integrations, AI-generated link descriptions, assistants and extensions, local translation of websites, tab grouping, and other AI-driven features.

How to disable AI features in Microsoft apps

Microsoft has managed to bake AI into almost every single one of its products, and turning it off is often no easy task — especially since the AI sometimes has a habit of resurrecting itself without your involvement.

How to disable AI features in Edge

Microsoft’s browser is packed with AI features, ranging from Copilot to automated search. To shut them down, follow the same logic as with Chrome: type edge://flags into the Edge address bar, hit Enter, then type “AI” or “Copilot” into the search box. From there, you can toggle off the unwanted AI features, such as:

• Enable Compose (AI-writing) on the web
• Edge Copilot Mode
• Edge History AI

Another way to ditch Copilot is to enter edge://settings/appearance/copilotAndSidebar into the address bar. Here, you can customize the look of the Copilot sidebar and tweak personalization options for results and notifications. Don’t forget to peek into the Copilot section under App-specific settings — you’ll find some additional controls tucked away there.

How to disable Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot comes in two flavors: as a component of Windows (Microsoft Copilot), and as part of the Office suite (Microsoft 365 Copilot). Their functions are similar, but you’ll have to disable one or both depending on exactly what the Redmond engineers decided to shove onto your machine.

The simplest thing you can do is just uninstall the app entirely. Right-click the Copilot entry in the Start menu and select Uninstall. If that option isn’t there, head over to your installed apps list (Start → Settings → Apps) and uninstall Copilot from there.

In certain builds of Windows 11, Copilot is baked directly into the OS, so a simple uninstall might not work. In that case, you can toggle it off via the settings: Start → Settings → Personalization → Taskbar → turn off Copilot.

If you ever have a change of heart, you can always reinstall Copilot from the Microsoft Store.

It’s worth noting that many users have complained about Copilot automatically reinstalling itself, so you might want to do a weekly check for a couple of months to make sure it hasn’t staged a comeback. For those who are comfortable tinkering with the System Registry (and understand the consequences), you can follow this detailed guide to prevent Copilot’s silent resurrection by disabling the SilentInstalledAppsEnabled flag and adding/enabling the TurnOffWindowsCopilot parameter.

How to disable Microsoft Recall

The Microsoft Recall feature, first introduced in 2024, works by constantly taking screenshots of your computer screen and having a neural network analyze them. All that extracted information is dumped into a database, which you can then search using an AI assistant. We’ve previously written in detail about the massive security risks Microsoft Recall poses.

Under pressure from cybersecurity experts, Microsoft was forced to push the launch of this feature from 2024 to 2025, significantly beefing up the protection of the stored data. However, the core of Recall remains the same: your computer still remembers your every move by constantly snapping screenshots and OCR-ing the content. And while the feature is no longer enabled by default, it’s absolutely worth checking to make sure it hasn’t been activated on your machine.

To check, head to the settings: Start → Settings → Privacy & Security → Recall & snapshots. Ensure the Save snapshots toggle is turned off, and click Delete snapshots to wipe any previously collected data, just in case.

You can also check out our detailed guide on how to disable and completely remove Microsoft Recall.

How to disable AI in Notepad and Windows context actions

AI has seeped into every corner of Windows, even into File Explorer and Notepad. You might even trigger AI features just by accidentally highlighting text in an app — a feature Microsoft calls “AI Actions”. To shut this down, head to Start → Settings → Privacy & Security → Click to Do.

Notepad has received its own special Copilot treatment, so you’ll need to disable AI there separately. Open the Notepad settings, find the AI features section, and toggle Copilot off.

Finally, Microsoft has even managed to bake Copilot into Paint. Unfortunately, as of right now, there is no official way to disable the AI features within the Paint app itself.

How to disable AI in WhatsApp

In several regions, WhatsApp users have started seeing typical AI additions like suggested replies, AI message summaries, and a brand-new Chat with Meta AI button. While Meta claims the first two features process data locally on your device and don’t ship your chats off to their servers, verifying that is no small feat. Luckily, turning them off is straightforward.

To disable Suggested Replies, go to Settings → Chats → Suggestions & smart replies and toggle off Suggested replies. You can also kill off AI Sticker suggestions in that same menu. As for the AI message summaries, those are managed in a different location: Settings → Notifications → AI message summaries.

How to disable AI on Android

Given the sheer variety of manufacturers and Android flavors, there’s no one-size-fits-all instruction manual for every single phone. Today, we’ll focus on killing off Google’s AI services — but if you’re using a device from Samsung, Xiaomi, or others, don’t forget to check your specific manufacturer’s AI settings. Just a heads-up: fully scrubbing every trace of AI might be a tall order — if it’s even possible at all.

In Google Messages, the AI features are tucked away in the settings: tap your account picture, select Messages settings, then Gemini in Messages, and toggle the assistant off.

Broadly speaking, the Gemini chatbot is a standalone app that you can uninstall by heading to your phone’s settings and selecting Apps. However, given Google’s master plan to replace the long-standing Google Assistant with Gemini, uninstalling it might become difficult — or even impossible — down the road.

If you can’t completely uninstall Gemini, head into the app to kill its features manually. Tap your profile icon, select Gemini Apps activity, and then choose Turn off or Turn off and delete activity. Next, tap the profile icon again and go to the Connected Apps setting (it may be hiding under the Personal Intelligence setting). From here, you should disable all the apps where you don’t want Gemini poking its nose in.

• For more on dealing with preloaded and system apps, check out our post, Delete the undeletable: how to disable and remove Android bloatware.

How to disable AI in macOS and iOS

Apple’s platform-level AI features, collectively known as Apple Intelligence, are refreshingly straightforward to disable. In your settings — on desktops, smartphones, and tablets alike — simply look for the section labeled Apple Intelligence & Siri. By the way, depending on your region and the language you’ve selected for your OS and Siri, Apple Intelligence might not even be available to you yet.

Other posts to help you tune the AI tools on your devices:

• Privacy settings in ChatGPT
• DeepSeek: configuring privacy and deploying a local version
• The pros and cons of AI-powered browsers
• Is a Gemini AI update about to kill privacy on your Android device?
• Should you disable Microsoft Recall in 2025?

Millions of IT systems — some of them industrial and IoT — may start behaving unpredictably on January 19. Potential failures include: glitches in processing card payments; false alarms from security systems; incorrect operation of medical equipment; failures in automated lighting, heating, and water supply systems; and many more or less serious types of errors. The catch is — it will happen on January 19, 2038. Not that that’s a reason to relax — the time left to prepare may already be insufficient. The cause of this mass of problems will be an overflow in the integers storing date and time. While the root cause of the error is simple and clear, fixing it will require extensive and systematic efforts on every level — from governments and international bodies and down to organizations and private individuals.

The unwritten standard of the Unix epoch

The Unix epoch is the timekeeping system adopted by Unix operating systems, which became popular across the entire IT industry. It counts the seconds from 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970, which is considered the zero point. Any given moment in time is represented as the number of seconds that have passed since that date. For dates before 1970, negative values are used. This approach was chosen by Unix developers for its simplicity — instead of storing the year, month, day, and time separately, only a single number is needed. This facilitates operations like sorting or calculating the interval between dates. Today, the Unix epoch is used far beyond Unix systems: in databases, programming languages, network protocols, and in smartphones running iOS and Android.

The Y2K38 time bomb

Initially, when Unix was developed, a decision was made to store time as a 32-bit signed integer. This allowed for representing a date range from roughly 1901 to 2038. The problem is that on January 19, 2038, at 03:14:07 UTC, this number will reach its maximum value (2,147,483,647 seconds) and overflow, becoming negative, and causing computers to “teleport” from January 2038 back to December 13, 1901. In some cases, however, shorter “time travel” might happen — to point zero, which is the year 1970.

This event, known as the “year 2038 problem”, “Epochalypse”, or “Y2K38”, could lead to failures in systems that still use 32-bit time representation — from POS terminals, embedded systems, and routers, to automobiles and industrial equipment. Modern systems solve this problem by using 64 bits to store time. This extends the date range to hundreds of billions of years into the future. However, millions of devices with 32-bit dates are still in operation, and will require updating or replacement before “day Y” arrives.

In this context, 32 and 64 bits refer specifically to the date storage format. Just because an operating system or processor is 32-bit or 64-bit, it doesn’t automatically mean it stores the date in its “native” bit format. Furthermore, many applications store dates in completely different ways, and might be immune to the Y2K38 problem, regardless of their bitness.

In cases where there’s no need to handle dates before 1970, the date is stored as an unsigned 32-bit integer. This type of number can represent dates from 1970 to 2106, so the problem will arrive in the more distant future.

Differences from the year 2000 problem

The infamous year 2000 problem (Y2K) from the late 20^th century was similar in that systems storing the year as two digits could mistake the new date for the year 1900. Both experts and the media feared a digital apocalypse, but in the end there were just numerous isolated manifestations that didn’t lead to global catastrophic failures.

The key difference between Y2K38 and Y2K is the scale of digitization in our lives. The number of systems that will need updating is way higher than the number of computers in the 20^th century, and the count of daily tasks and processes managed by computers is beyond calculation. Meanwhile, the Y2K38 problem has already been, or will soon be, fixed in regular computers and operating systems with simple software updates. However, the microcomputers that manage air conditioners, elevators, pumps, door locks, and factory assembly lines could very well chug along for the next decade with outdated, Y2K38-vulnerable software versions.

Potential problems of the Epochalypse

The date’s rolling over to 1901 or 1970 will impact different systems in different ways. In some cases, like a lighting system programmed to turn on every day at 7pm, it might go completely unnoticed. In other systems that rely on complete and accurate timestamps, a full failure could occur — for example, in the year 2000, payment terminals and public transport turnstiles stopped working. Comical cases are also possible, like issuing a birth certificate with a date in 1901. Far worse would be the failure of critical systems, such as a complete shutdown of a heating system, or the failure of a bone marrow analysis system in a hospital.

Cryptography holds a special place in the Epochalypse. Another crucial difference between 2038 and 2000 is the ubiquitous use of encryption and digital signatures to protect all communications. Security certificates generally fail verification if the device’s date is incorrect. This means a vulnerable device would be cut off from most communications — even if its core business applications don’t have any code that incorrectly handles the date.

Unfortunately, the full spectrum of consequences can only be determined through controlled testing of all systems, with separate analysis of a potential cascade of failures.

The malicious exploitation of Y2K38

IT and InfoSec teams should treat Y2K38 not as a simple software bug, but as a vulnerability that can lead to various failures, including denial of service. In some cases, it can even be exploited by malicious actors. To do this, they need the ability to manipulate the time on the targeted system. This is possible in at least two scenarios:

• Interfering with NTP protocol data by feeding the attacked system a fake time server
• Spoofing the GPS signal — if the system relies on satellite time

Exploitation of this error is most likely in OT and IoT systems, where vulnerabilities are traditionally slow to be patched, and the consequences of a failure can be far more substantial.

An example of an easily exploitable vulnerability related to time counting is CVE-2025-55068 (CVSSv3 8.2, CVSSv4 base 8.8) in Dover ProGauge MagLink LX4 automatic fuel-tank gauge consoles. Time manipulation can cause a denial of service at the gas station, and block access to the device’s web management panel. This defect earned its own CISA advisory.

The current status of Y2K38 mitigation

The foundation for solving the Y2K38 problem has been successfully laid in major operating systems. The Linux kernel added support for 64-bit time even on 32-bit architectures starting with version 5.6 in 2020, and 64-bit Linux was always protected from this issue. The BSD family, macOS, and iOS use 64-bit time on all modern devices. All versions of Windows released in the 21^st century aren’t susceptible to Y2K38.

The situation at the data storage and application level is far more complex. Modern file systems like ZFS, F2FS, NTFS, and ReFS were designed with 64-bit timestamps, while older systems like ext2 and ext3 remain vulnerable. Ext4 and XFS require specific flags to be enabled (extended inode for ext4, and bigtime for XFS), and might need offline conversion of existing filesystems. In the NFSv2 and NFSv3 protocols, the outdated time storage format persists. It’s a similar patchwork landscape in databases: the TIMESTAMP type in MySQL is fundamentally limited to the year 2038, and requires migration to DATETIME, while the standard timestamp types in PostgreSQL are safe. For applications written in C, pathways have been created to use 64-bit time on 32-bit architectures, but all projects require recompilation. Languages like Java, Python, and Go typically use types that avoid the overflow, but the safety of compiled projects depends on whether they interact with vulnerable libraries written in C.

A massive number of 32-bit systems, embedded devices, and applications remain vulnerable until they’re rebuilt and tested, and then have updates installed by all their users.

Various organizations and enthusiasts are trying to systematize information on this, but their efforts are fragmented. Consequently, there’s no “common Y2K38 vulnerability database” out there (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Approaches to fixing Y2K38

The methodologies created for prioritizing and fixing vulnerabilities are directly applicable to the year 2038 problem. The key challenge will be that no tool today can create an exhaustive list of vulnerable software and hardware. Therefore, it’s essential to update inventory of corporate IT assets, ensure that inventory is enriched with detailed information on firmware and installed software, and then systematically investigate the vulnerability question.

The list can be prioritized based on the criticality of business systems and the data on the technology stack each system is built on. The next steps are: studying the vendor’s support portal, making direct inquiries to hardware and software manufacturers about their Y2K38 status, and, as a last resort, verification through testing.

When testing corporate systems, it’s critical to take special precautions:

• Never test production systems.
• Create a data backup immediately before the test.
• Isolate the system being tested from communications so it can’t confuse other systems in the organization.
• If changing the date uses NTP or GPS, ensure the 2038 test signals cannot reach other systems.
• After testing, set the systems back to the correct time, and thoroughly document all observed system behaviors.

If a system is found to be vulnerable to Y2K38, a fixing timeline should be requested from the vendor. If a fix is impossible, plan a migration; fortunately, the time we have left still allows for updating even fairly complex and expensive systems.

The most important thing in tackling Y2K38 is not to think of it as a distant future problem whose solution can easily wait another five to eight years. It’s highly likely that we already have insufficient time to completely eradicate the defect. However, within an organization and its technology fleet, careful planning and a systematic approach to solving the problem will allow to actually make it in time.