# Librarians Are Running Packed 'Avoiding AI' Workshops — And Big Tech Should Pay Attention > Source: > Published: 2026-07-26 13:09:03+00:00 # Librarians Are Running Packed 'Avoiding AI' Workshops — And Big Tech Should Pay Attention At public libraries in Bangor, Maine and South Philadelphia, librarians are running 'Avoiding AI' workshops teaching attendees how to disable Apple Intelligence, Google Gemini, email assistants, and browser-integrated AI features. Sessions draw 70 attendees — six times typical library tech class turnout — with waitlists forming immediately. Librarian Hannah Cyrus told TechCrunch that 'forced adoption of AI on people's devices might be the straw that's breaking the camel's back.' The workshops represent an early signal of consumer pushback against AI features installed and enabled without consent. ## 70-person waitlists for "how to turn it off." The consumer AI backlash now has a storefront. At public libraries in Bangor, Maine and South Philadelphia, librarians are running "Avoiding AI" workshops that teach attendees how to disable Apple Intelligence, Google [Gemini](/glossary/gemini), email writing assistants, and browser-integrated AI features. The sessions are drawing 70 attendees each — roughly six times the turnout for typical library tech classes like "Intro to Computers." A Philadelphia library's Instagram post about the workshop crossed 2,000 likes, well above library social media norms. The Bangor sessions capped registration at 30 and immediately hit waitlists. Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Bangor who developed the original workshop, told TechCrunch that "forced adoption of AI on people's devices might be the straw that's breaking the camel's back." Charlie Bailey, who runs the Philadelphia sessions inspired by Cyrus's published journal article, said he was contacted by dozens of librarians from around the world asking how to run their own workshops. This is not a Luddite movement. It is a consumer reaction to AI features being installed, enabled, and updated without consent — on phones, in browsers, in email clients, in word processors — and the librarians are the ones people trust to help them undo it. ## Why Libraries Are the Front Line Public libraries are one of the few remaining institutions that offer free, non-commercial technical assistance to anyone who walks in. You do not need an Apple Store appointment. You do not need to be a paying customer. You do not need to navigate a corporate support [chatbot](/glossary/chatbot). You walk into the library, and a human being helps you. When Apple added Apple Intelligence to iOS without a clear opt-out path, when Google integrated Gemini into Gmail and Docs without asking, when Microsoft put [Copilot](/compare/github-copilot-vs-cursor) in Word and Excel under the $30/month license that many users did not choose themselves — the people who got confused, frustrated, or angry did not call Apple Support. They went to the library. Librarians have been teaching digital literacy for decades. The "Avoiding AI" workshops are digital literacy — just inverted. Instead of teaching how to use a tool, they are teaching how to disable one. The demand says something uncomfortable for tech companies: a growing number of users see AI features as unwanted software to be removed, not helpful tools to be adopted. ## The Scale of the Backlash Signal Seventy attendees per session does not sound like a large number compared to AI adoption statistics showing hundreds of millions of [ChatGPT](/compare/chatgpt-vs-claude) users. But context matters. These are not tech conference attendees. They are not early adopters evaluating a new product. They are regular people who use computers and phones for daily life — email, photos, documents, web browsing — and who have decided the AI features added to those products are making their experience worse. The waiting lists and viral social media indicate demand that exceeds supply. If two librarians in Maine and Philadelphia are filling rooms, how many people would attend these workshops if every public library offered them? How many would attend if the workshops were promoted by institutions people already trust — schools, community centers, senior centers? The answer is unknowable without more data, but the early signal is clear: there is unmet demand for "how to turn AI off" that no tech company is addressing. ## The "Forced Adoption" Problem Cyrus's diagnosis — "forced adoption" — identifies the core friction. Tech companies are adding AI features to products that people already use and depend on. The features arrive through automatic updates. The opt-out mechanisms are buried in settings menus, often multiple levels deep. Some features cannot be fully disabled without losing functionality users want. This is different from choosing to use ChatGPT or [Claude](/glossary/claude). Those are voluntary. You sign up, you use the product, you stop using it when you want. Forced adoption means the product you already use — your phone's photo gallery, your email client, your word processor — now has AI features you did not ask for, cannot easily remove, and may not trust. The trust dimension matters. AI features introduced without consent do not get the benefit of the doubt. When Apple Intelligence summarizes your messages and gets the tone wrong, when Gemini rewrites your email and changes the meaning, when Copilot generates content in your document that you did not request — each instance reinforces the perception that the feature was added for the company's benefit, not the user's. ## What This Means for AI Companies Tech companies have spent two years racing to put AI everywhere. The librarians' workshops are an early indicator that "everywhere" includes places users do not want it. The demand for opt-out instructions — real, structured, waitlisted demand — suggests a market segment that AI companies are not serving: people who want AI off their devices. Currently, the only entities meeting that demand are public librarians running workshops in their spare time. The market response options are straightforward but politically difficult. Companies could build simple, prominent opt-out mechanisms — a single toggle that disables all AI features, clearly labeled, easy to find. They could make AI features opt-in rather than opt-out, giving users the choice at setup rather than forcing them to dig through settings later. They could ship AI-free versions of their products for users who prefer them. Each of these options costs something — fewer users engaging with AI features, less [training](/glossary/training) data, reduced ability to claim adoption numbers. The alternative is watching libraries fill rooms with people who are paying customers learning how to turn your product's flagship features off. That cost is harder to measure but likely larger in the long run. The librarians are not anti-AI activists. They are digital literacy instructors responding to demand from their communities. The demand exists because the tech industry has not offered a real choice. Until it does, the "Avoiding AI" workshops will keep filling rooms — and the waitlists will keep growing. Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI. ## Key Terms Explained [Chatbot](/glossary/chatbot) An AI system designed to have conversations with humans through text or voice. [Claude](/glossary/claude) Anthropic's family of AI assistants, including Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. [Gemini](/glossary/gemini) Google's flagship multimodal AI model family, developed by Google DeepMind. [Training](/glossary/training) The process of teaching an AI model by exposing it to data and adjusting its parameters to minimize errors.