Author describes 'generative AI vegetarianism'—deliberately avoiding ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and similar tools in daily life

The author turns off optional AI settings (Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence), avoids built-in AI features that cannot be disabled, and does not consume content produced by generative AI tools.

Generative AI tools are software products that generate text, images, or other media from user requests and large quantities of underlying data—typically using transformer-based math (a system that predicts what words might come next) trained on internet text, scanned books, and video transcriptions.

The author cites concerns including uncontrollable bias and discrimination in these tools, loss of critical thinking and creativity, tendency toward cliché over insight, job displacement in creative fields, concentration of power among large companies, reliance on uncompensated content scraping, vendor lock-in risk, obscuring human accountability, and high electricity consumption.