Good Luck Turning Off Facebook's New Meta AI — It's Here to Stay

Despite the litany of backlash and outcry, it seems that artificial intelligence is here to stay — and it's now a standard part of some of your favorite social media apps. X, formerly known as Twitter, has made its AI "Grok" available to premium users, and Facebook seems to have integrated its new AI into its search engine.

Facebook users logging on to do the routine internet stalking of their exes or high school bullies will notice that the search bar now prompts them to "Ask Meta AI anything." Unsurprisingly, most users don't want to ask the new artificial intelligence anything — so how do you turn it off? Like most things, it's not that easy.

Unfortunately, as Meta AI is an integral part of the platform's offerings, it may not be entirely possible to turn it off, but there are a couple of avenues users can take to try.

One possible solution is to mute Meta AI. To do this, select the arrow in the search bar without typing anything into it. This should bring up the chat with the artificial intelligence. From here, select the information "i" icon in the upper-right corner of the chat and select "Mute."

You should then be given the option for how long you want to mute the bot, similar to the mute feature available on Facebook Messenger. Select "Until I change it" for the duration of time you want the AI to be muted. Once this is done, some users have reported the AI being removed from their search bars, essentially returning their feed back to normal.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case for everyone who tries this trick, though. Others have been able to block the Meta AI profile with mixed results, though most report it ultimately returning.

At this time, there is not a tried and true method for removing Meta AI from your Facebook account, as it seems Meta is insistent on making it a staple feature of the social media site.

When going to search for something on Facebook, the Meta AI pops in, stating that users can ask it "anything." Even though this makes it seem as though the AI has replaced the search bar, users can still go in and type whatever they want and search as usual.

To use the search bar, just type your search as you normally would. Instead of clicking the little arrow in the search bar, though, just hit the Search or Return key on your keyboard.

Clicking the arrow will direct it to Meta AI, while inputting the search through your keyboard will return the normal search results.

Though it may not be possible to completely remove the AI from your Facebook at this moment, not using it will continue to tell Facebook that it's not something that particularly interests you. It's possible that Meta will implement and update to Facebook in the future that allows users to remove it from their feeds, but for now it's best to work around it.