# New Discourse User - a few questions

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-discourse-user-a-few-questions/414985>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Tags:** ai\
**Created:** [October 18, 2026, 10:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-discourse-user-a-few-questions/414985 "2026-10-18T22:54:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 3:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-discourse-user-a-few-questions/414985/5 "2026-10-19T15:34:15Z")

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> [@NateDhaliwal](#):
>
> If you are using the free plan, I don’t think you can disable it.

Yes, this is true specifically for content scanning, we can’t allow the free plan to go unmonitored and become dominated by spam or illegal content.

All the other AI features on the free plan are optional. On a new free site, you can put this at the end of your `https://example.discourse.group` URL to quickly filter to a view that shows all of the relevant settings

```plaintext
/admin/site_settings/category/all_results?filter=any:ai_embeddings_semantic_quick_search_enabled|ai_embeddings_semantic_search_enabled|ai_embeddings_semantic_related_topics_enabled|ai_embeddings_enabled|ai_summarization_enabled|ai_ask_ai_enabled|ai_helper_enabled

```

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/9/a/d9aaeb0d522a66b777bfa0693fc692fcee93dfa7.png)

It’s also worth noting that we host the models used by default, so your data isn’t being sent off to a third party AI company, it’s all processed on the same servers your content is already on.

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