Now one *assumes* these buttons don't activate unless pressed, but there's a problem. First, the checkbox to disable "Gemini" in Messages itself only turned off an activate-on-select button. Second, on a phone— where "scroll" and "tap" are both taps— accidental activation of buttons is a part of life.

This happens to me again and again, with Google, with Copilot in VS Code, with everything. A company adds an "AI"-branded feature with an off switch, you turn it off, they later enable it anyway.

The repeated lesson here is that a company, organization, computer program, or person who uses the privacy, environmental, and trust disaster sold as "generative AI" for one thing, can no longer be trusted for any thing. If it is tolerated for one thing, it will eventually be used for all things. If a program adds an optional "AI"-branded feature you *have* to stop using that program completely, because if (when) the company feels the use metrics are too low they will stop making it optional.

0
4
0

If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://mastodon.social/users/mcc/statuses/116217192853700637 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)