AI is widely used to generate images. There are numerous services available to generate images using AI. All it takes are instructions and the AI generates the image.
These images may be published and they may land in search engines. It is often difficult to distinguish them from human-created images. If you do not want these in search, then you may be interested in AI Blocklist.
It contains about 1,000 URLs currently that are known to publish AI-generated images. When you apply the blocklist in content blockers like uBlock Origin, these will be blocked from image search engines such as Google Images or Bing Images.
You may be interested in this as well:
The list can be installed in several ways and the GitHub repository has instructions for uBlock Origin, uBlacklist, AdGuard and Pi-Hole.
Good to know: uBlacklist is an extension that blocks domains that you specify from search results.
Install the AI Blacklist in uBlock Origin
Here is how you install the list in uBlock Origin:
- Activate the icon of the uBlock Origin extension in the browser that you are using.
- Click or tap on the cogwheel-icon in the interface that opens.
- Switch to the Filter lists tab.
- Expand the Import section at the bottom of the page.
- Paste the following address into it: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist/main/list.txt
- Click apply changes.
The list is now activate. Note that you can open it in the browser directly to check it out before you apply it.
To remove it, simply delete the line under import and select apply changes again.
Since it is a web-based list, it is updated in uBlock Origin whenever the list is updated on the GitHub repository.
Additional instructions are available on the Github repository. There you also find instructions in integrating the list in AdGuard or Pi-Hole.
Closing Words
The extension is useful if you search for images regularly and want to reduce AI-generated images in the search results. The maintainer says that it works better in uBlacklist, as it is designed specifically for filtering sites in search engines.
Do you use filters to block certain sites or content in search? Or do you simply skip that content when you encounter it? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Out of frustration one day after I kept getting the “ask ai” box at the top of my search results I added “-ai” to the end of my query, and it worked.
Sorry, I don’t remember if I was using DDG or Google at the time. DDG is my default but sometimes I use google for different results.
They could not keep politics out of filter list, dumbasses. Sorry, I will wait for another anti-AI list.
What bothers me is not AI-generated images but the fact they are not explicitly described, tagged as such, it is the misleading confusion that is problematic as I see it. Does the AI Blocklist consider this nuance? I doubt it does and if the idea is to take the risk an image 1) may not have been AI-generated (AI Blocklist mistake) or 2) may be AI-generated but explicitly mentioned … then it’s a risk I won’t take.
There are also two kinds of AI images. Purely AI Generated and AI Enhanced. AI Enhanced is original picture with AI background or AI removed some imperfections. I am ok with AI Enhanced for almost every utilitarian purpose. Pure AI Generated, I would except only for thumbnails.
Thanks for the tip Martin. I applied the list to uBlock Origin on Firefox. No other browser in use at the moment.