I said no and Apple said yes

Hot damn! I hope they fix that. I have little interest in being forced into Apple’s AI – or any AI, for that matter.

Apple of all companies should really not have these kinds of dark patterns. And apart from banking on Apple as a company, its influential users are hopefully not going to let this fly. 🤞

Update, October 5: There is now RemoveMacAI, an open-source tool that says it can turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and remove its downloaded models without disabling System Integrity Protection. I haven’t tested it. The Hacker News discussion raises a valid concern about its one-line installer: it checks a download checksum, but doesn’t automatically verify the build attestation. So this is a possible workaround, not a recommendation to blindly run it. Having to reach for a third-party tool to make “no” stick is still the part that bothers me.