Part of the issue stems from “AI” being an all encompassing term in 2025 for a lot of tools that have existed for years or decades, and modern LLM and generative tools. Most common folk see the high power usage, environmental impact, and copyright-laden issues with generative tools and LLMs and apply that to everything machine learning and AI-adjacent. No amount of simple marketing or explanation can shift that popular perception easily. AI as a label has bad connotations that some people (rightfully in their respective cases) feel strongly about.
There’s nuance to where and how Kagi uses “AI”, how not all machine learning is actually a problem or point of concern, and how people perceive it’s sprinkling all over Kagi’s UI. I’d agree there isn’t a “no-AI” plan Kagi could offer, because the broad label of AI would mean they’d be lying if they offered the same great search just without the assistant, or summaries, etc. Kagi could, however, break down what technologies are used, their impact and cost, so people understand not every tool is a power hungry or content hungry black hole.
I think it’d be hugely beneficial, a boon even, if Kagi offered a default setting to completely disable visible and interactive AI tools. People would also be very willing to pay for a plan where these features are locked away completely. You pay Kagi to use its amazing search, pay for the search infrastructure and not to fund the access to models and non-search AI development. No ability to quick answer, no assistant, no summaries, no translate (though this is publicly available so it’s “free” already, news as well). Kagi was and always will be an AI company, so if people draw the line in the sand at that there’s no way around it for them.
For others, though, just being assured their money isn’t going towards the AI tooling would be enough. It’s easy to connect the higher tier costs for Kagi to additional AI tooling, such as Assistant’s model access. Why pay more for accessing dozens of LLM’s when all a user wants is unlimited search queries? A lot of people just want private and unlimited search, none of the AI bells and whistles, and they’d like to feel that they aren’t directly having to pay for these things they won’t use.
