At public libraries, a new kind of technology class is drawing people who do not want more AI in their daily tools. The workshops are not about rejecting every use of artificial intelligence. They are about helping people understand what is being added to their devices, why it matters, and how to make their own choices.
A library class built around opting out
Charlie Bailey, a librarian in South Philadelphia, opened one session by asking the room to take out their phones. The goal was practical: show attendees how to disable Apple Intelligence and Gemini.
The setting made the moment stand out. Bailey was teaching in a library classroom designed for children, with a bright alphabet rug underfoot. But the 20-odd adults in the room had come for a workshop called Avoiding AI.
Bailey told TechCrunch that the idea came from a wider frustration with AI tools that people feel are being pushed into products they already use. He described the workshop as a response to the feeling that tools users did not request are suddenly appearing across everyday life.
The hour-long session begins with a plain explanation of AI chatbots and other consumer AI tools. Bailey covers why someone might want to use them, why someone might prefer not to, and then moves platform by platform through the steps for turning certain features off.
Digital literacy now includes saying no
For Bailey, the work fits squarely inside the mission of a librarian. He framed the class as digital literacy: helping people understand technology well enough to choose how they use it.
“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,” Bailey said. “It’s important, especially when it can be so difficult not to use them, and when the design seems to force adoption.”
That focus on autonomy is what separates the class from a simple tips session. The attendees are not only looking for a button to switch off a feature. They are trying to regain a sense of control over devices, accounts, apps, and services that increasingly make AI part of the default experience.
The workshop also shows how public libraries continue to act as trusted places for technology help. Patrons already ask librarians for guidance on computers, phones, online accounts, and digital services. As AI features move into those same spaces, the questions follow.
How one workshop spread among librarians
Bailey got the idea from Hannah Cyrus, a librarian in Maine. Cyrus had developed her own Avoiding AI workshop and wrote a journal article about it. After that, dozens of librarians from around the world contacted her.
“This has never happened before with anything I’ve worked on,” Cyrus told TechCrunch. “Nobody has ever been emailing me like, ‘Can you give me your Intro to Computers slides?’”
At the Bangor Public Library, Cyrus is the person patrons often approach when they need help with technology. She said she was hearing more questions from people who wanted to know how to turn AI features off, including tools that tried to write emails or summarize messages they could already read.
That demand shaped the class. Cyrus saw an opportunity to explain the basics of what happens when people use AI products, then show them how to opt out if they did not want those tools involved.
The turnout was far beyond her usual technology classes. Intro to Computers typically attracts about a dozen attendees. For her first Avoiding AI workshop, interest was high enough that registration was capped at 30 people, a waitlist was opened, and the session was shared on Zoom. Including the livestream, about 70 people attended each of Cyrus’ first two workshops.
Public interest is spilling online
Bailey saw a similar reaction in Philadelphia. The library’s Instagram post about the Avoiding AI event received over 2,000 likes and 220 shares. Most of the library’s posts usually receive no more than a few dozen likes.
The demand was strong enough that Bailey scheduled a second program after the first received too many registrations. For a public library event about changing settings on phones and digital platforms, the response was unusually visible.
Inside the workshop, the mood was communal. Bailey invited attendees to share their own advice, and one person offered a search tip: appending “&udm=14” to a Google Search to hide AI results. Bailey wrote the string on a whiteboard next to the log-in credentials for the teen Wi-Fi server.
The attendees’ concerns were varied. One person named Johnny connected the issue to data centers near homes. Another attendee, Gabrielle, said she encounters AI at work and thinks about the environment when she sees it. At the same time, she made clear she was not opposed to all AI uses, saying, “I’m not against AI in terms of medical breakthroughs.”
Not anti-technology, but pro-choice
The Avoiding AI workshops are not presented as a rejection of technology as a whole. Cyrus herself pointed to optical character recognition as a useful tool for scanning old documents at the library.
That distinction matters. The concern described by Bailey, Cyrus, and attendees is not simply that AI exists. It is that AI tools are being inserted into familiar products in ways that can make refusal difficult.
In that sense, the workshops are about agency. People want to know what their devices are doing, what features have been added, and which choices remain available to them.
“I think the forced adoption of AI on people’s devices might be the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back in some ways,” Cyrus said. “The awareness has been growing for a long time that these products and these companies that make them have an outsized influence over us, and that we’re not really using these products in the way that we would like to.”
For libraries, that creates a clear role. When technology companies make AI a default part of consumer platforms, librarians can translate the change into plain language and show people where their choices still are. The popularity of Avoiding AI workshops suggests that many patrons are not just curious about AI. They are looking for a way to decide, deliberately, how much of it belongs in their lives.