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Apple may have to officially support Apple Intelligence removal on Macs to protect sales
You only have to read some of the comments right here to see that there’s a vocal minority of people rejecting all AI tools, including Apple Intelligence. That’s led to an unofficial tool enabling people to turn off the feature on their Macs and remove all downloaded Siri AI models.
We warned yesterday that this could be a risky thing to do, but it’s now being suggested that Apple may have to officially support an AI removal feature in order to protect hardware sales …
There’s been growing pushback against generative AI in general, with opponents citing reasons ranging from fearing for the survival of the human species down to simply not wanting unwanted AI features to take up storage space on their devices.
The latest Apple Intelligence models can require up to 14GB of storage, so there’s a significant hit to 256GB machines if you don’t want the features. That led indie developer Om Lahore to create a project called RemoveMacAI.
We warned yesterday that using this is not without risks. Given how deeply Apple Intelligence is embedded into macOS 27, it could have unwanted impact on even quite basic functionality.
But some are arguing that Apple may have to introduce an official way to remove Apple Intelligence from Macs. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points to organizations banning the installation of AI tools.
There are institutional groups that have rules against AI — these places aren’t allowing Golden Gate at all until and unless Apple Intelligence can be removed. And that means not buying new Mac hardware that only runs Golden Gate.
Currently, Apple says organizations can use device management to “restrict the use” of certain Apple Intelligence features, but it’s unclear whether it’s possible to disable all of them.
It’s not a live issue yet, but as future generations of Macs start dropping support for older versions of macOS, failing to allow the removal of AI features could start to hit Apple’s hardware sales.
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