iOS 26 had a toggle you could select to disable all Apple Intelligence features.
That toggle was removed for iOS 27. Every AI feature has to be turned off individually: https://archive.ph/AE72I
There is a way of turning it off through Content Restrictions in Screen Time, but one Redditor reported that doing this disables CarPlay for some reason.
This is pretty disappointing.
Is the excellent OCR that lets me select text within an image Apple Intelligence? It uses local models. Or the prediction engine that optimizes battery life by backgrounding apps you're less likely to use, or applies updates while you're sleeping? What about the Latent Semantic Mapping text classification framework, which uses language models for fuzzy document search -- and has been around since 2007?
It wouldn't have made sense in the past to add a master kill switch for all these features, and it doesn't really make sense now to have one for the latest iteration.
Just like "Microsoft Copilot" and "IBM Watson".
With Apple Intelligence disabled and ~8GB reclaimed, you could still OCR, still use Siri, still separate subject from background, translate text, so on and such.
Now it’s all or nothing, shoving LLM weights into 128GB of storage for some people.
There’s a better approach.
I remember when your personal computer did exactly the things you asked.
Now, it seems you have to trust on a third party so the computer does the things you "probably wanted".
I must be getting old.
To me that means if you go with the “nothing” route and disable Siri, the local latent models aren’t removed from storage until your device fills up, with the hope you enable Siri again.
Akin to all of Microsoft's apps with disparate Windows features pre-installed and unable to be removed from your device except through Storage Sense.
It turns out that you CAN disable MOST of the Apple Intelligence features without compromising HomePod features or CarPlay by either:
A) Downloading and installing the profile I just created that does everything that follows below here (https://github.com/carlosonunez/bash-dotfiles/blob/main/ios-...), or
B) Doing these things:
1) Going to Settings > Siri and changing the "Language" to something other than "English (United States)." (I changed mine to "English (Canada).") This automatically disables Siri AI and restores Siri Classic. You'll need to go through voice training again though.
2) Going to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Siri and setting "Siri" to "Siri Classic."
3) Going to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Siri and setting all Apple Intelligence features (Writing/Math Assistance, Image Creation, Extensions) to "Blocked" or "Don't Allow"
4) Going to Settings > Messages and setting "Summarize Messages" to OFF
5) Going to Settings > Mail and setting "Summarize Messages" to OFF. (This might disappear after following step [3])
Steps 1 and 2 delete the Apple Intelligence models from your phone, giving you about 30GB of space back.
(Courtesy goes to this Reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1wh7i10/ios_27_how_to_...)
At the time of the adverts, only a few % of tech workers were using LLMs for daily use, that number has skyrocketed and so has the appetite and acceptance that this technology is here to stay and be embraced as a serious tool for work.
It was not at all clear (to me as a relative 'normie' and not an AI researcher) prior to about GPT4 / Sonnet 3 that they would be more than a research lab toy.
https://yourconfidant.ai/
I don’t really care what Apple calls it. If there was one switch before, why remove it?
If this stuff takes up a few gigs, just let people turn it all off. Easy.