Public Libraries Are Running Packed Workshops Teaching People How to Turn Off AI

At the Bangor Public Library in Maine, the most requested technology class in recent memory teaches patrons how to turn off the AI features on their phones.

Hannah Cyrus, the librarian who created the workshop, built it from a pattern she kept seeing at her desk. Patrons arrived with variations of the same complaint: their phones were trying to compose their emails, summarize messages they could read on their own, and insert capabilities they had never asked for. How, they wanted to know, could they make it stop? 1

She called the session "Avoiding AI." Registration filled so quickly that she capped it at 30 people, opened a waitlist, and added a livestream. Including the Zoom audience, about 70 people attended each of her first two sessions. Cyrus's typical computer-literacy classes draw roughly a dozen 1.

The format spread. Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia, adapted Cyrus's curriculum after reading a journal article she published about building the workshop. His library's announcement drew shares and sign-ups far beyond their usual reach, and he scheduled a second session when the first filled 1. Dozens of librarians worldwide have since contacted Cyrus requesting the materials. She told TechCrunch she has never received this kind of response to anything she has created 2.

The workshop itself is practical and direct. Bailey opens with a primer on how consumer AI tools work, explaining why someone might want them and why they might choose to abstain. Then he projects step-by-step instructions for disabling specific features across popular platforms: Apple Intelligence, Google's Gemini, AI-generated search summaries. Attendees follow along on their own phones, toggling settings in real time 1.

Public libraries occupy a civic role that no technology company can replicate: they are open to everyone regardless of income, staffed by professionals whose job is to help people find and evaluate information. When that institution builds a standing, waitlisted workshop to help people remove those tools, it marks a gap between what builders assume users want and what users are actively seeking to undo.

That gap is not about hostility toward AI. Workshop attendees are explicit about this distinction. One participant in Bailey's session praised AI's role in medical research. Cyrus uses OCR herself at the library 1. What they object to is not the existence of these tools but the absence of a genuine choice about when those tools enter their lives.

Bailey frames the workshops as digital literacy rather than opposition. "As a librarian, I think it's important to see this as advancing digital literacy and helping people reclaim their autonomy over whether they want to use AI tools," he told TechCrunch 1. Cyrus described the forced installation of AI on consumer devices as the point where people who already felt technology companies hold too much sway over their daily routines finally ran out of patience 1.

For the companies shipping these features, the signal is concrete. People are not rejecting AI. They are rejecting the assumption that adoption should be automatic and that opting out should require technical knowledge most consumers do not have. The institution people already turn to for help with technology is now fielding enough demand to build a standing curriculum around removal. That is a measure of how far consent has eroded.

The librarians running these workshops are testing a different proposition: that when people understand what has been installed on their devices and are shown how to remove it, a meaningful share will choose to. The room in Philadelphia where Bailey teaches is designed for children. A rug on the floor still marks M for "moon" and Z for "zebra." The adults sitting in those small chairs, phones open, are not mounting a backlash. They are negotiating terms.