How to Remove Elementor AI Feature from Your WordPress Website

First thing first. I don't hate AI. I just don't like the implementation of an AI feature that interrupts the user experience which, unfortunately, happens to Elementor users.

Before the generative AI era, the Elementor interface was super clean and joyful to use. After they added the AI feature, everything started to look cluttered. Not just the Elementor editor, but your entire WordPress site.

They added the AI button almost anywhere. On the block editor, on the library manager. You name it.

If you are like me, someone who loves to see a clean interface, then I will show you how to remove the Elementor AI button from your website. Not just from the Elementor editor, but from your entire WordPress site.

Shortcuts:

• Why remove Elementor AI?
• Removing Elementor AI for a specific user
• Removing Elementor AI from the entire site
• Summary

Why Does it Make Sense to Remove Elementor AI?

In general, there are two types of WordPress users. Those who create websites for their own businesses and those who create websites for someone else's businesses (a.k.a clients).

If you fall into the first category, I am not sure whether generating images directly from the WordPress editor is a good idea because ideally, you need to make some adjustments using a dedicated image editor to resize the image and several other things.

Also, I am convinced enough that you are not too impressed to see another pink link on your Gutenberg settings panel which makes your editor look more polluted.

Not to mention the pink button on the media library manager.

Another reason to remove the Elementor AI feature can be a client's request.

As a good service provider, you can't reject the request as they have given you money for your service.

Worth to note that the Elementor AI feature is not free. And if you have decided to not spend extra money on AI, then it makes more sense to disable the feature to bring back the original editing experience in Elementor and WordPress.

How to Remove Elementor AI

There are two options to remove the Elementor AI feature and I will cover them all in this post.

Removing AI Feature for a Specific User

Elementor offers a built-in setting option to disable its AI feature. The funny thing is, they seem to make it hard for you to find it.

Instead of placing the option under its own Settings screen along with other setting options, which makes more sense, Elementor places it under WordPress' Profile Settings screen.

And, as you can guess, the setting option works only per user. Not all users on your website.

So, if your site has multiple users, you need to manually edit each profile to remove the AI feature on each user. Or you can ask your users to disable the feature on their own.

Here are the steps to disable Elementor AI for a specific user

For Users with an Administrator Role

If you have an administrator role on your user profile, you can disable the Elementor AI feature of all users on your website.

First, go to Users -> All Users on your WordPress dashboard to view the list of the users on your website.

Select a user you want to remove the Elementor AI of and click the Edit link.

Scroll down to the Elementor - AI section and uncheck the Enable Elementor AI functionality option.

Don't forget to click the Update Profile button at the bottom to apply the change.

For Users without an Administrator Role

The steps to disable Elementor AI are the same if you don't have an administrator role. The only difference is the initial step.

Instead of going to Users -> All Users to view all users on your website, you can go straight to the edit profile screen. To do so, you can go to Users -> Profile on your WordPress dashboard.

The rest is the same as the users with an administrator role above.

Removing AI Feature for All Users

If you have multiple users on your website and you want to remove the Elementor AI feature from all users without manually editing each user profile, then you can use this option which involves custom code.

Here is the code you can use:

function disable_elementor_ai() {
    return null;
}
add_filter('get_user_option_' . Elementor\Modules\Ai\Preferences::ENABLE_AI, 'disable_elementor_ai');

The above code is a custom function that overrides Elementor AI functionality for all users to ensure that no AI buttons appear on your site.

Where to Add the Code?

The easiest way to add a new custom function in WordPress is by editing the functions.php file of the active theme. But I don't recommend this approach because when you update your theme, your custom function may be overridden unless you use a child theme.

A smarter way to add a custom function is by creating a custom plugin dedicated to hosting custom functions.

With this method, when you want to add a new custom function in the future, you can simply edit the plugin file, which you can do via the WordPress dashboard. No need to login to your hosting panel.

You can read this post to learn more about how to create a custom plugin in WordPress for this particular purpose.

After you have created the custom plugin, you can go to Plugin -> Plugin File Editor on your WordPress dashboard.

Select the plugin you have just created from the dropdown menu and click the Select button to edit it.

Paste the code right after the last line of the plugin file and click the Update File button to apply the new custom function.

That's it. The Elementor AI buttons should now be completely gone on your WordPress website.

Summary

Generative AI is great, but only if it is implemented properly and doesn't interrupt the joyfulness of users in using software.

Sadly, it's not the case in Elementor.

Instead of giving users an instant way to disable the AI feature, they "hide" the option to disable the AI feature in a place where it's almost impossible for users to find it without asking for help (thankfully, we have search engines).

In Elementor, you can disable the AI feature for individual users or entire users on your website.

If you want to disable the AI feature for all users without needing to manually editing the profile of each user, you can create a custom function in which the code is available above.