Guides by Editorial Team

How to Switch Off Built-In AI in Office, Docs and Browsers

Office, Gmail, Google Docs, Chrome and Edge all ship AI features. Here are the exact switches for turning each one off, and what each switch actually stops.

Microsoft and Google both put AI inside software you already use, and both put the switch somewhere you would not look first. In Office it sits under account privacy. In Gmail it hides under a heading called Smart features. In Chrome it lives in a panel called AI Innovations. In Edge it shares a menu with the AI it is supposed to control. In two of those four cases there is a second switch that the first one does not cover.

The question worth answering is not the vague one about whether these vendors train on your files. Their documentation answers that in plain sentences. The question worth answering is which toggle stops which feature from touching which file, because the answer is different in every product and the settings overlap in ways that are easy to get wrong.

TL;DR

  • Office and Copilot are governed separately. Microsoft’s own documentation says your privacy settings “don’t control whether Microsoft Copilot can reference web content when responding to your prompts”, because web grounding has its own toggle (Microsoft Learn).
  • Copilot’s training promise is explicit. “Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren’t used to train foundation LLMs, including those used by Microsoft Copilot” (Microsoft Copilot privacy).
  • Google ships two layers, and the user layer gates the admin layer. Google’s documentation notes that “To access Gemini in Workspace services, users need to turn on smart features and personalization” (Google Workspace Admin Help).
  • The Gemini service defaults to on. “The default setting for Gemini features in Workspace services is on” (Google Workspace Admin Help).
  • Chrome may fetch a model in the background and deletes the files when you turn On-device AI off under AI Innovations (Chrome Help).
  • Edge has one switch that matters most: Allow Copilot to read context clues on the web (Microsoft Edge help).

Office: the switch people miss

The first Microsoft setting is the one for “optional connected experiences”: cloud-backed services inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook that are licensed to you rather than to your employer. Microsoft’s overview of optional connected experiences lists the ones powered by Bing: 3D Maps, Map Charts, Insert Online Pictures, Insert Online 3D Models, PowerPoint QuickStarter, Researcher, Smart Lookup, and the similarity checker that ships with Editor.

On Windows, go to File > Account > Account Privacy, then select Manage Settings. On a Mac, open any Office app and go to Preferences > Privacy. If an administrator has already made the call for you, Word says so in plain words: “Your organization’s admin manages your privacy settings and has decided to disable optional connected experiences” (Microsoft Learn).

It is worth knowing what leaves your machine while those features run. Microsoft states it directly: “Any search queries you provide to the Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise organization while using these services are sent to Microsoft Bing” (Microsoft Learn). The same page notes that the required service data Microsoft collects (usage, error and performance data) is pseudonymised as defined in ISO/IEC 19944-1:2020, section 8.3.3.

Copilot is a separate question

Optional connected experiences are not Copilot, and the documentation is careful to keep them apart. Microsoft describes a separate control for connected experiences that analyze your content: turn it off and Copilot features will no longer be available in Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word (Microsoft Copilot privacy). Turn off optional connected experiences and the Copilot features that are themselves optional connected experiences stop as well; Microsoft’s example is that this could affect the availability of web search.

What Copilot does with your content is documented clearly. “Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren’t used to train foundation LLMs, including those used by Microsoft Copilot” (Microsoft Copilot privacy). What is stored is the interaction itself: your prompt, the response, and the citations behind it. Microsoft calls that your Copilot activity history, says the data is encrypted while it is stored, and says you can delete it from the My Account portal. Administrators can find the same records through Content search or Microsoft Purview, and can set retention policies on them.

So in Microsoft 365 there are two things to do, and they are not the same thing. A setting controls what happens next. A deletion removes what is already there.

Google: two switches, and they interact

Google’s structure is different, and read in order it is confusing. There is an administrator switch for Gemini itself, a user switch for smart features, and the second one gates the first.

The admin switch: Gemini per service

In the Google Admin console, go to Menu > Generative AI > Gemini for Workspace, then open the Feature access panel. That needs the Gemini Settings administrator privilege. Click Edit next to the service you want to change, choose On or Off, then click Save (Google Workspace Admin Help).

Six services can be toggled that way: Gmail, Calendar, Drive (with Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings and Vids), Meet, Chat, and Google Workspace Studio (Google Workspace Admin Help). The state you are changing from is on, and Google says so in the same paragraph.

The catch sits in the paragraph below it. Google’s documentation warns that “Even if Gemini is off for a specific app, users can still access its data when using Gemini in other apps” (Google Workspace Admin Help), with the example that a Gmail user can ask Gemini about a Drive file even when Gemini has been turned off for Drive. Switching off Gemini for Drive does not put your Drive files out of reach of Gemini in another app such as Gmail.

The user switch: smart features

Every account, personal or work, has its own layer underneath. In Gmail: Settings > See all settings, then the General tab, then scroll to Smart features, then the box labelled “Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet” (Gmail Help). That box governs automatic email filtering, Smart Compose, Smart Reply, and the summary cards that sit above email threads. Further down the same General tab, Google Workspace smart features > Manage Workspace smart feature settings holds the Workspace-wide and other-products options; the Workspace-wide setting can also be changed from Calendar, Chat, Drive, Meet and Voice.

Those two options come with their own terms. Turning on smart features in other Google products means “you agree to let Google use your Workspace content and activity to personalize your experience in other Google products” (Google Workspace Admin Help). What you get for it, on personal accounts, is restaurant reservations and to-go orders in Maps, suggested tickets and loyalty cards in Wallet, and Personal Intelligence in the Gemini app and in Search services.

The layers are linked, and the link is the thing most people miss. Google’s documentation notes that “To access Gemini in Workspace services, users need to turn on smart features and personalization” (Google Workspace Admin Help). A user with smart features switched off cannot reach Gemini in Gmail even if the administrator left the Gemini service switched on for Gmail.

Defaults also differ by region. Google’s help page for these settings states that “By default, smart feature settings are off” for people living in the European Economic Area, in Japan, in Switzerland, or in the United Kingdom (Gmail Help). The same page notes that when smart features are on, your data may be used to improve them.

Chrome and Edge: the browser is its own AI vendor

Chrome downloads a model on its own initiative

Chrome’s on-device AI does not always wait for you to ask for it. Google’s help page on on-device generative AI models says “Chrome may download on-device Generative AI models in the background, so features that rely on these on-device models stay ready for use.” The download needs an unmetered network connection and “Minimum free disk space: 20GB (approximate)”, and happens only on eligible devices.

The models power features Chrome lists as “Help with writing or rephrasing text”, “Warn you about scams”, “Summarize web pages” and “Organize your tabs”. Chrome’s own description of the trade is that the work stays on the machine: “data is processed locally” (Chrome Help).

The switch is at the top right of the browser: More > Settings > AI Innovations, then turn On-device AI off. Chrome is unusually clear about the consequences. “Chrome will delete the on-device Generative AI model files from your device”, the features that rely on them stop working, and Chrome “will not download these models again while the setting is off”. It also warns against doing it by hand: deleting the files yourself “is not recommended and may not prevent future downloads controlled by this setting” (Chrome Help). One limit is stated plainly: some Chrome AI features do not rely on the on-device models and “may still run even if the on-device Generative AI models are removed or the setting is turned off”.

Edge: one toggle that matters

Edge’s Copilot can read the page you are on. Microsoft documents that Copilot “might use your query, recent conversation history, and browsing context” when it answers, and that for a prompt that refers to page content, “Edge can use information from the current webpage, the page title, your open tabs, and your browser history to answer the question” (Microsoft Edge help).

The switch is in the Edge toolbar: More menu > Copilot and AI > Allow Copilot to read context clues on the web (Microsoft Edge help). Microsoft frames it as a control over what Copilot can access, and warns in the same passage not to share sensitive information that you would not want used as browsing context.

What the switches do not undo

Two limits are documented rather than guessed, and they are the reason a settings tour is not a clean bill of health.

First, Google says of the learning process behind smart features: “The learnings developed from this improvement process may persist even after you turn off a smart feature setting or delete your Workspace Content & Activity from your Google Account” (Gmail Help). Turning the setting off stops your Workspace content and activity being used to improve the relevant features from that point on. It does not un-learn what was already learned from it.

Second, in Microsoft 365 the Copilot activity history, which is your prompt and the response with its citations, stays stored until it is deleted, either by you from the My Account portal or by an administrator through Content search, Purview or a Purview retention policy. A privacy setting and a deletion request are two separate actions, and only one of them is a switch.

The bottom line

Every switch described here is documented. In Office, start at File > Account > Account Privacy > Manage Settings, and remember that the same page explicitly does not cover Copilot’s web grounding. In Google Workspace, work out which layer you are actually standing in: the administrator Feature access panel for the Gemini service, or the per-account smart features settings in Gmail and the other apps. In Chrome, the AI Innovations panel is where the on-device model lives, and switching it off deletes the files. In Edge, the context clues toggle decides whether your open tabs and your history are fair game for a prompt.

Then do the part no switch can do for you, which is deleting what has already been stored. Microsoft exposes Copilot activity history through the My Account portal and through Purview. Google exposes Workspace content and activity through your Google Account. A switch that stops the next thing is worth having. Removing the last one is a separate job.