Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google

[Karasu]

17. Um..yes, they are. "Scrolling down" doesn't change that. Companies forcing the use of AI goes MUCH farther than simple

AI-generated answers..and at the point that the AI-generated answer appears, resources have already been wasted anyhow, so simply choosing to not read it doesn't legitimize it.

If you really don't think forced use isn't happening, you also must not be aware of what's been happening on social media (I recently quit using it largely because of this). Unless you live in the EU, there is no real opt-out from it. Just for starters, Meta (the parent company of FB and IG) is treating all publicly posted content--and now, even private DMs on IG, which used to be encrypted--as tools for training AI. I could go on and on.

It is increasingly being forced on employees in the workplace as well, with no real recourse.

I think you're thinking of this as just a search engine issue, which it absolutely is not. It is also worth noting that many of the search engines that do give you the option to disable it intentionally make it very hard to find let alone enable that option.

I use NoAI DuckDuckGo and already mentioned it in a reply to someone else, but I do appreciate you promoting it as well!