As artificial intelligence becomes the default layer of everyday life, some users are quietly choosing to step back from it — not out of fear, but out of preference for simplicity. Android owners who find Google's Gemini assistant more powerful than they need can reclaim the leaner Google Assistant through a handful of settings changes, a small act of self-determination in an era when technology increasingly assumes more is always better. The option to opt out — of the assistant itself, of data collection for AI training, of the app's presence entirely — remains available, at least for now, th