I’m seeing a couple of articles (Verge; MacRumours) on an ‘open source tool’ to remove, prevent reinstallation, and reverse it all.
If anyone with experience in such things cares to take a look at this, I would value the analysis. I haven’t updated to 27 yet but when I do I would really like to do what this tool does, but am not sure it is trustworthy, having no experience in evaluating code.
If there is a series of Terminal commands to run written by a trustworthy, known developer, I would gladly run them. Maybe the person who developed this is in that category.
I’m not sure I’d want to try any of that. In my experience after updating a bunch my family’s systems to 27 and fiddling with Siri AI, it shouldn’t be necessary.
While any Mac with Apple silicon can take Golden Gate (27), and can run Siri AI (not all other Apple devices that can be upgraded 27 can also run Siri AI), Siri AI isn’t installed automatically. You have to explicitly choose to install Siri AI (Beta). And even after it’s installed (and used), you can turn it off.
Personally, I’d recommend turning off Siri AI (Beta) on any Mac used by children (especially if they use it for homework:-).
In System Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy, tap or click Siri. There you’ll see a choice of which Siri [Siri AI (Beta) or Siri Classic] to use. Or Don’t Allow Siri, which also prevents you from turning it on in System Settings > Siri. (If you simply downgrade Siri from AI to Classic, and then reverse that you’ have to re-enable Siri AI in System Settings > Siri again.)
Other items in System Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy > Siri will limit Siri AI in specific ways rather than turning it off completely. For example
Broad World Knowledge - whether Siri can use web content to answer general information requests
Extensions - whether extensions, including ChatGPT can provide additional capabilities
Doubtful that the ‘open source tool’ does much more. Not sure what it could if you don’t explicitly choose to install Siri AI (Beta) in the first place.
Correction: if you have explicitly installed Siri AI (beta), ‘open source tool’ will do more than if you simply turn off Siri AI (beta) in Screen Time.
The tool frees up some disk storage (allegedly 12GB), while it’s not clear (at least to me) if turning off Siri AI (beta) does that. The tool also installs a configuration profile and some other things – without any provision for turning off, removing or reversing – to persist through MacOS updates to prevent Siri AI and its included AI models from ever being downloaded to and installed on that Mac.
If they’re smart enough to use Siri AI, they’re smart enough to use AI through the browser. I’d personally rather see them use Siri AI because if somehow the query can’t get run on-device it gets gets sent to Apple’s private compute. That data isn’t available to anyone else and isn’t retained by Apple. I can’t say that’s true for the other guys.
That being said, an on/off switch would be something that would be a good thing to have. Especially for those who will never use it (but… never say never) and want to save the disk space associated with the on-device models.
As far as third party “solutions” go, anything that hacks macOS outside of what Apple documents is at your own risk. The cure could be worse than the illness.
At least one of the blog stories I read says this tool will allow all that.
That’s a tricky term for sure. It’s hard to say where to draw the line and if I’m consistent across the board in my opinions about Apple and its products/services, but…
I just expected more respect from Apple on this, especially how controversial this “AI” topic is. Changes to the appearance of macOS, ok I can deal with it over time or seek out things like Terminal commands or TinkerTool settings for things I don’t like.
But installing many GB worth of code, with instrusive capabilities, many spread over several settings panes and defaulted to on… one (4 decades plus user) would expect, out of user respect, an on/off switch and an option in installation process whether or not to install it, at least for the first few years. They are making now a big deal out of Full Disk Access for others while giving themselves Extraordinarily Full Disk Access Without Explicit User Permission (sure, it’s probably in the T&C), so one would think they might be sensitive to the notion of granting invasive capabilities to software.
There was also something about the Apple Intel stuff not being available in the EU, where I am. I wonder if it will even install this in the first place when I connect thru an EU based IP. I think I’ll wait til the first big update.
Thanks @bob32 for taking a deeper look at it and comments. Does the developer offering this, as far as you can tell, appear trustworthy? Does the tool have any questionable code in it?
I’m not a parent, but I wouldn’t underestimate the tenacity of children in this theme. ;-)
I agree about the on/off switch and don’t ever want anything to do with “AI”, would rather have the disk space back.
I don’t think this tool is intended as a ‘hack’ in the bad sense, at least that’s what the blogs are saying. My impression is that it uses Terminal commands and available techniques to do what it does, but as a non-expert that’s why I’m asking.
I’d say Apple’s behavior is not surprising, unfortunately, and is just the latest in a long history of “disrespectful” changes and choices in its products. Removing the headphone jack from iPhones, the proprietary connection for igloo iMac speakers, never supporting Blu-Ray playback, putting a U2 album onto people’s computers without asking…the list goes on and on. This attitude is part of Apple’s corporate DNA and is encapsulated by the Steve Jobs quote “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
I agree it’s not surprising. The company is changing, or my impression of them is changing. They do sometime pretend to respect users privacy and concerns that ‘go viral’ and such. I was hoping for a more gradual change on “AI”.
Did you happen to look at the ‘removal tool’ code, or have the expertise to form a sharable opinion on that?
I looked at the code and the author’s comments on GitHub. It is built upon another toold called Pared, which is a separate GitHub project that I didn’t look at.
Unfortunately, it’s been a while since I did any Swift coding, nor have I ever tried doing anything like what the RemoveMacAI author does – so I’m not really qualified to evaluate his code in any detail.
His code doesn’t hide or remove the Playground app, which may also include some Apple AI models, separate from whatever Siri AI has.
I did a quick scan of the utility’s code as well, as well as looking at some of the writeups. By the way it’s not a script.. it’s a Swift program.
To turn off use of the AI features, a configuration profile is being installed. That profile appears to disable the features as documented here: IntelligenceSettings | Apple Developer Documentation . I’d suspect that these entries in the configuration profile turn off the same features that Apple’s user documentation describes in the link I cited above. Given that this is all publicly documented, I don’t find any issue with a configuration profile to automate all the individual steps.
The gray area to me is the method that they’re using to remove the models to save the disk space. The code is using the UnifiedAssetFramework API which is a private macOS API (according to Claude, the framework lies in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/. While some smart person may have been able to figure out how to use it to remove the downloaded models, there’s no guarantee that Apple won’t change it at some point in time.
I’d be fine if the utility had just stopped at installing the configuration profile. And using private APIs to remove the models is orders of magnitude better than just “running scripts to find and nuke components”. You’ll need to make the call to feel comfortable in using a utility that’s reverse engineered the use of a private macOS framework and that it won’t do something to break your Mac.
I haven’t because I don’t plan to remove Apple Intelligence from my devices. But in general, I won’t use stuff posted on GitHub unless I have enough information about the developer to feel the code is trustworthy.
In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple reinstates the single off-button in the next few months, either as a result of bad publicity or of threats from a non-USA (hello, EU?) regulator.
Despite turning off Mail → Preferences → Viewing → “Summarize message previews” and more importantly Mail → Preferences → Composing → “Personalize Smart Replies”, Mail.app still ‘suggests’ garbage when I start to compose a message.
What part of “keep that blankety blank AI slop away from me” can’t Apple understand?!?
Steve Jobs’s line was in reference to new products and capabilities. I suspect the reason you still feel a sense of grievance was that the products on which you could no longer use them meant so much to you — and they were brought to market by Jobs’s monomania.
