Recently, most of the systems that you might commonly use have been attempting to add artificial intelligence features to their products or services. They have also been trying to ensure that the most users possible use the genAI features.
Sometimes the artificial intelligence features are simply not apparent. An upgrade will come out, and the artificial intelligence features are already added in. The artificial intelligence features are often pushed, as a recommended add-on. The companies producing these products and services will note that you can get a free trial, or that the basic service is free, and you might as well try it.
It probably comes as no particular surprise that I am not an unreserved fan of artificial intelligence, and particularly the most recent generative artificial intelligence services and products. For the most part, I have been able to avoid getting connected, automatically, to the AI features. For one thing, I tend not to use the defaults and products that everybody else does. For example, although I use MS Windows, I have never purchased licenses for MS Word or MS Office, or the more recent variations on the Office suite. I also tend to settings myself, and not simply accept the defaults that are handed to me. So a number of the generative AI products that are being pushed to us, simply don't show up on my machine.
I also tend to know the different artificial intelligence services and what they are called. So I know not to accept any come-ons for Co-pilot, or Grok, or Gemini, or Meta AI, even though I do use services and products from the companies that have created these large language model products.
However, a recent upgrade to one of my phones caught me by surprise. The latest update for the phone, which runs on Android, may not have installed Gemini (it was already installed on the phone), but it enabled Gemini by default, and turned it on at startup. As soon as I turned the phone on, Gemini was running. Gemini was supposed to assist me in all kinds of activities that I did on my phone.
I didn't want to completely disable Gemini, or to uninstall it from the phone. But neither did I want Gemini to interfere with what I was doing on my phone. So I was rather annoyed at this rather arrogant presumption that I needed Gemini's help with my phone, whether I wanted it or not.
This was made all the more annoying by the fact that my ability to turn off my phone suddenly disappeared. The particular key press that I used to shut down my phone was disabled by the fact that Gemini now used this same key press as the function to call it up and start asking me what I wanted. So I was no longer able to power off my phone. It took a little bit of research, using my computer, to find out how I was supposed to shut down my phone, now that Gemini was in the way.
It was a few days later that I finally got around to more seriously researching this upgrade, and to figuring out how to eliminate this interference. Actually, it took a bit of research, plus the fact that I know a bit more about technology than most people do. The initial suggestions that I received from the research were simply to disable Gemini, which, as previously noted, I didn't want to do. But, yes, I figured out how to unlock Gemini from demanding to assist me with absolutely everything on my phone, and I also figured out how to redefine the key press, so that it did, once again, shut down the phone as I wanted it to.
But I still consider it rather arrogant of Google, and I am not particularly pleased with this particular choice of forcing a service on their customers, whether they wanted it or not.
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