Timeline for AI Assist is now available on Stack Overflow
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
31 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 23, 2025 at 10:19 | history | bounty awarded | Resistance Is Futile | ||
| Dec 9, 2025 at 10:45 | comment | added | dmh | @AshZade, as others have clarified, having this supposedly non-essential-to-the-experience feature take up prominent real estate on the page is opting everyone in to having it as part of their experience. Meta conversations are also not essential to the experience, but they haven't been pushed on all users the way this chatbot has. I understand you want ppl to use it so you can get usage data and figure out how to make something actually useful, but you could do that without pushing it on everyone through the current UI, or you could let us disable it or have to clickthrough to use it | |
| Dec 8, 2025 at 11:24 | history | edited | esqew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
The OP has now become the 22nd lowest-scoring non-deleted question on MSE, superseding the linked beta announcement - updated ranking
|
| Dec 7, 2025 at 14:58 | comment | added | lindes | @AshZade re "Everyone can continue to use Stack without being impacted by AI Assist like many features on the site" -- I disagree. I've been impacted by seeing a notification of the existence of this thing, and then spending time trying to find a way to opt out of it in my preferences, failing to find one, and then ending up here. It's arguably a minor impact, however it's one that comes with a substantial psychological hit, because I loathe that this is here. PLEASE GIVE US A WAY TO OPT OUT. That would satisfy me, mostly. Though trust is still eroded that it even exists. | |
| Dec 7, 2025 at 11:36 | comment | added | N. Virgo | @AshZade "no one is being forced to use it so isn't opting out just not using it?" The issue is that this is being obviously pushed on us. Anyone visiting stackoverflow.com, even if logged in, sees a very prominent "AI assist" interface right at the top of the page. When browsing at a moderate zoom level, that's basically all you see - the actual Q&A's are below the fold. In that context, "just don't use it" feels honestly a bit disingenuous. These UX changes affect everyone regardless of whether they use it or not, and people are asking for that to be opt-in. | |
| Dec 7, 2025 at 9:36 | comment | added | Joachim | @AshZade You're linking back to this answer, I don't think that was your intention? | |
| Dec 5, 2025 at 12:53 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | @user400654 I talk about who this scope is meant for and why it's not meant to compete with other AI tools meta.stackexchange.com/a/415121/1258352. | |
| Dec 5, 2025 at 10:52 | comment | added | Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI | @ashzade You've been getting feedback about this overhyped Clippy you're insisting on forcing down everyone's throat, and the overwhelming response from pretty much everyone who cared enough to respond was "No thank you, we hate this, this is a bad idea, don't do it" and all you staffers ever came back with was "Well, we're gonna do it anyway". | |
| Dec 4, 2025 at 16:21 | comment | added | user400654 | They could… just as they could have continued asking questions here after ChatGPT was released, just as people “could” ignore getting downvoted and come back and continue to participate after their first bad experience on SO, there’s a lot of things people “could” do, but why would people who want a solution like ai assist come to so for it when every mainstream widely available solution is already trained on so and has none of these guardrails? SO gave up the goods on this being a useful solution ages ago. Now it’s just a low quality copy pasta. | |
| Dec 4, 2025 at 15:58 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | @user1937198 if it's a genuine question, the answer is "obviously not". Everyone can continue to use Stack without being impacted by AI Assist like many features on the site. | |
| Dec 4, 2025 at 15:56 | comment | added | user1937198 | @AshZade no one is being forced to use the site, and right now the easiest way to get rid of the ai assist is to not engage with the site. Is that the story you want? | |
| Dec 4, 2025 at 14:11 | comment | added | MrUpsidown | But they HAD TO do like every other site... | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 21:16 | comment | added | canon | @AshZade "This is the start, not the end of AI Assist." Alas... | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 19:05 | comment | added | Resistance Is Futile | "How do I turn this off" is not written with large enough font. This is crucial question. I don't want to have anything to do with AI Assist and I don't want to be reminded of its existence, and I want to receive spam notifications about it in my inbox even less. | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 18:24 | comment | added | Tim Lewis | @AshZade Given the feedback already received on this Meta post, you know full well what dmh means when they say "opt-in vs opt-out"... Also, I just got a message in my Stackoverflow inbox that when clicked, takes me to the AI Assist chat page. I did not opt-in to that, but here we are. | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 17:55 | comment | added | user400654 | … you know what they meant… why be purposely antagonizing towards people providing feedback | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 17:49 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | @dmh I'm not sure I understand, no one is being forced to use it so isn't opting out just not using it? | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 17:39 | comment | added | dmh | @AshZade, did the team consider making this opt-in instead of opt-out? | |
| Dec 3, 2025 at 9:14 | comment | added | Lundin | @TimLewis Speaking of irony... Announcement 1: " AI Assist is now available on Stack Overflow" Announcement 2: "Policy: Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is banned". Browsing the site is like using some sort of Kafkaesque mental illness simulator... | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 23:48 | history | edited | esqew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 129 characters in body
|
| Dec 2, 2025 at 19:31 | history | edited | esqew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 480 characters in body
|
| Dec 2, 2025 at 16:25 | comment | added | Tim Lewis | For fun, I asked "How do I disable this?", to which "AI Assist" said "What do you mean by 'this'?". So I rephrased to "How do I disable AI Assist on Stackoverflow", to which it responded with "Generative artificial intelligence (a.k.a. GPT, LLM, generative AI, genAI) tools may not be used to generate content for Stack Overflow. Please read Stack Overflow's policy on generative AI here." Pretty ironic, but ultimately, useless. "We don't have plans to provide toggles turn off any AI Assist" - Personally, I really wish you did. For now, I'll use 3rd-party tools to hide this. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:56 | comment | added | Snow | I've created a feature-request for this AI Assist to be toggled by users: Allow people to opt out of AI Assist. Let's see if that's a viable feedback route. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:55 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | We're always open to reconsidering decisions like this. Let's see how the feature is used and the feedback we get across channels. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:53 | comment | added | esqew | @AshZade That's rather disappointing to hear, and unfortunately predictable given Stack Exchange's similar decisions in recent past. I hope the product team will reconsider this stance. Thankfully, uBlock will do the trick just the same. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:51 | comment | added | l4mpi | @AshZade better make some backup plans right now, because if I understand the OP correctly this is going to be added to the question pages in the future... if so, the backlash might be bigger than SE expects, and a "hide this forever" button might get you at least a tiny bit of community goodwill. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:46 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | We don't have plans to provide toggles turn off any AI Assist components. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:46 | comment | added | l4mpi | @esqew blocking the input field and the div above with ublock origin seems to work for now. But yes, I would also like a button in the settings that permanently hides all the LLM trash... | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:44 | comment | added | esqew | @AshZade Thanks for the prompt response. Any chance you can address my question emphasized above about how to deactivate this feature (short of using an adblocker on the associated DOM elements)? | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:38 | comment | added | Ash Zade Staff | Thanks for the feedback. Re: value in the IDE, we agree. This is the start, not the end of AI Assist. The current scope is for scenarios like where users hit a wall in their IDE and search or look for help. We know from our surveys and analytics that it's a need that hasn't gone away. Our future does include access in the IDE. | |
| Dec 2, 2025 at 15:35 | history | answered | esqew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |