Users Discover Simple Trick to Disable Google’s AI Overviews

A Google search page displaying AI-generated results, with a frustrated user searching for direct links.

If you’ve been frustrated with Google’s AI-powered search results delivering questionable summaries instead of direct answers, there’s some good news. It turns out a simple trick can bypass AI Overviews entirely—just throw an expletive into your search query.

For example, searching “How large is the student body of Yale University?” will return an AI-generated summary at the top of the search page. However, if you tweak the query to “How large is the fucking student body at Yale University?”, the AI response disappears, leaving behind only the classic list of blue links.

A Loophole Born Out of Google’s Caution

This trick was first reported by Ars Technica, and it likely stems from Google’s strict filtering of its Gemini AI model. Unlike some AI chatbots—such as xAI’s Grok, which freely engages with profanity—Google’s AI models are designed to avoid repeating expletives. Rather than attempting to sanitize or modify explicit search queries, Google appears to have chosen the simpler approach: disabling AI Overviews altogether when profanity is detected.

This is not the first workaround users have discovered to remove AI-generated search summaries. Other methods involve adding specific characters to the search URL, but this profanity-based approach is much simpler—and much more cathartic.

A Sign Users Don’t Want AI Search?

The discovery of yet another method to opt out of AI Overviews raises a bigger question: do users even want AI summaries in their searches? Google argues that AI Overviews don’t reduce traffic to original sources, claiming they encourage deeper exploration. However, media companies remain unconvinced, with some even taking legal action against OpenAI and Perplexity for training AI models on their content.

The Larger AI Push—and User Backlash

Google’s AI-generated search responses have already sparked controversy. When AI Overviews were first introduced, they went viral for providing bizarre, misleading, and sometimes dangerous answers—such as suggesting that cheese can be kept from sliding off pizza with glue or that eating pebbles could improve gut health. Many of these responses were traced back to misinterpreted Reddit comments, highlighting AI’s inability to detect sarcasm or satire.

This problem isn’t limited to Google. Apple’s Siri has also faced criticism for integrating ChatGPT-generated responses, sometimes providing incorrect answers rather than directing users to the web. Meanwhile, AI-powered features have become inescapable, appearing in Google Docs, social media platforms, and search engines.

How Long Will This Loophole Last?

It’s likely that Google will patch this loophole eventually. But for now, if you’re tired of AI-generated summaries cluttering your search results, just tell Google to give you the fucking links.

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