Blocking Google AI Mode?

[Jedgson]

We've been asked to block AI focused mode in Google and were struggling to find a way since Netsweeper doesn't allow it to be blocked, it doesn't seem to be able to block UDM 50.

 

We've also tried blocking Gemini completely.

 

Has anyone been able to find a way to block it?

 

 

[ITGuyNW]

In GPO we have these settings to play with

 

 

Fortunately, our smoothwall catches this and blocks it so unsure how effective the GPO is.

[Jedgson]

3 minutes ago, ITGuyNW said:

In GPO we have these settings to play with

 

 

Fortunately, our smoothwall catches this and blocks it so unsure how effective the GPO is.

Thanks, is this for Google Chrome? (we use Edge)

[ShellfishClive]

Some people have had success blocking this URL: google.com/search?udm=50 on filtering systems. Seems to make the "AI Mode" button disappear. Not tested it myself though!

[sigma]

2 minutes ago, ShellfishClive said:

Some people have had success blocking this URL: google.com/search?udm=50 on filtering systems. Seems to make the "AI Mode" button disappear. Not tested it myself though!

You can re-write the um=50 into google search strings in Netsweeper if you have access to do that.

[ITGuyNW]

2 hours ago, Jedgson said:

Thanks, is this for Google Chrome? (we use Edge)

Yeah its for Chrome. Not sure you can do the same in Edge via GPO.

[CSmith]

For any Smoothwall admins, blocking the AI Tools category will prevent users from accessing the AI mode search feature. Alternatively we provide a 'Google web search: Basic Mode' which will restrict users to basic web/image search only.

 

For non-Smoothwall users, as suggested above by @sigma and @ShellfishClive, the following regular expression should block any requests to Google's AI mode

 

(https?://)?(www\.)?google\.com?/search\?.*?udm=50(&|$)

 

Edited February 20 by CSmith

[timbo343]

We found "AI Tools" blocks the login page for our helpdesk for end users... 🫤🫤

[mavhc]

Should probably ban search as well, don't want people finding out things

[ITGuyNW]

Found this morning that users could not use google properly.

 

Unticked this in cloud filter and it came back to life.

 

Guessing google have made a change?

 

[TwistedHelixis]

Something like this was mentioned on an education forum on Reddit.

 

Apparently there is an anti AI Chrome plugin that some schools are using.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/k12sysadmin/comments/1tjs38r/schoolsafe_google_ai_overview_blocker/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=post_body&embed_host_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.edugeek.net%2Findex.php

 

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hide-google-ai-overviews/neibhohkbmfjninidnaoacabkjonbahn?utm_source=item-share-cb

 

Edited June 1 by TwistedHelixis