Owners Voice Displeasure With AI-Ification of Pixel Phones

Pixel owners recently took to the (un)official home of #TeamPixel on reddit, voicing much displeasure with the state of AI-ification of the Google Pixel lineup. Naturally, this conversation also led to people voicing displeasure with all sorts of things, such as RAM prices and the AI-ification of basically everything in life right now. It’s AI this and AI that, with some folks finding little reprieve from the ever-advancing world of technology.

Here’s the original post from JxK_1 that has collected nearly 700 upvotes at the time of this writing. Based on that figure alone, along with the 300 comments, this is a hot topic for many in the space.

I honestly can’t stand this phone anymore. I’d prefer the Pixel 7 to this 1000x.

Tapping the G pill now pulls up the laggy fullscreen page for AI, Google Assistant sucks, taking screenshots sucks because you need multiple taps to edit anything because of AI, the AI button on the front screen right where I tap the Google search button, not to mention COUNTLESS other things the phone shoves in your face as AI capable that’s useless.

I was originally going to make this post about tapping the Pill taking a second to load a new page pisses me off to no ends. But then realized a lot of things do.

No doubt, we too can attest to what Google has been doing with regard to the injection of Gemini into not just its Pixel phones, but the entire Android/Google app services ecosystem. It’s actually been quite amazing to watch, as the transformation has really taken hardly any time at all on the grand scale. It went from being sprinkled into apps to being found in nearly all aspects of the Pixel/Android experience.

It Ain’t Just Pixel: This isn’t only a Pixel thing. Samsung Galaxy owners are living with a similar situation, though, maybe not as intense as what Google is doing with Pixel. Galaxy AI is accessible from all parts of newer Galaxy phones, but a lot of those features are Google-powered anyway. The Galaxy AI vs. Gemini argument is essentially the Spider-Man meme.

One comment on the original post hit me right in the feels, because it resonates with my current stance on AI and how it’s being utilized by the vast majority of social media users.

And that’s exactly what all this AI bullshit is. Slopification.

We’ve gone to the next level beyond keeping the peasants busy with gambling, drinking and sports.

AI has the potential to keep you scrolling and brain rotting forever and so much worse.

If that doesn’t make you want to buy a cabin in the woods and disappear forever, then more power to you. It makes me want to curl up into the fetal and cry.

Just Disable It: Many comments point to the fact that users can simply disable a lot of these things in the Settings menu on Pixel devices. It’s true! You can head to Settings > Apps > All Apps > AI Core, Private Compute Services and Android System Intelligence, then disable a lot of this AI bloat. Obviously, some of the AI features you might enjoy would no longer work, but if anyone is truly done with AI then there are options.

Like on reddit, we’re sure AI is a hot topic among our readers, too. If we do intend to have a conversation about it, let’s be civil. We’re all human after all (we are, right?) and can maintain a level of respect for one another.