Turning off Gemini in Google Search for Students?

MattDPenn
Contributor II

Greetings all,

So we have Gemini turned off for our student OUs out of a abundance of caution but I've recently noticed that students appear to still be able to talk to Gemini in Google searches in some capacity. Though I could be misunderstanding how this AI enabled search functions. Is there any way to turn Gemini/AI Overview off in Google Search?

The only thing I've been able to dig up so far is using xFanatical's Safe Doc extension or possibly blocking "udm=50" deals with part of it.

4 REPLIES 4

smackall
New Contributor II

We weren't able to find any tools for this in the admin console (which is a shame). There are currently two AI integrations available in a  google search. One is the automatic AI response (AI Overview) that appears above search results, and one is the "AI Mode" view. Our filtering company helped us add *google.com/async* and */async/folif* to our block list, which blocks  answers in "AI Mode". For AI Overview we have student searches use "simple google" as outlined here: https://www.googleforeducommunity.com/t5/Peer-Peer-Topics/Blocking-Google-Translate-for-students/m-p... (this also strips their results of all the info google surfaces now,  such as "things to know,""people also asked," "person overview," etc.)

Hoping there is a more organic solution for this eventually. 

huh, interesting how to nuke AI Overview you also have to nuke Google Translate. I'm not sure staff will be a huge fan of that but we also don't have a lot of English language learners. I may need to poke at seeing how often students are translating stuff beyond trying to look up curse words in other languages.

alexgrutza
Contributor III

For what it's worth, there are Google Chrome policies that will disable Gemini in Chrome and AI Mode for users that shouldn't have access. I don't know if that affects the "AI Overview" on a simple google search, but it will remove the functionality of the AI Mode within Chrome as long as the user is signed into their Chrome browser with their organization account. I am not sure if there is a GPO option for Windows for disabling it without being signed in. 

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Kim_Nilsson
Admin Moderator

Adding this in URL Blocking stops some of it. All characters necessary.

*?udm=50*

It will block that phrase all over internet on all Google domains.

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