How do I remove Apple Intelligence from my iPad Air?

Apple Intelligence cannot be removed from iPad models that support this feature. The feature itself can largely be disabled, but its associated LLM and assets cannot be fully removed.

Regrettably, you may struggle with an iPad that has so little internal storage. These 32/64GB devices are primarily intended for use in Educational settings, or in environments where the ability to store local data on the device is not required.

If deleting assets from your iPad is not releasing sufficient storage, a workable remedy to (at least temporarily) improve available storage is to first ensure that you have either an iCloud or iTunes backup of your iPad - and then completely reset and erase the iPad - and then restore your backup to the iPad. This process will eliminate all cached and temporary data.

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

Erase all content and settings:

Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPad > Erase All Content & Settings

After the reset, set-up the iPad with your AppleID - and restore the backup to your iPad:

Restore all content to iPad from a backup - Apple Support

When choosing an iPad, you would be well advised to purchase as much internal storage as your budget might reasonably allow - as internal storage (and other hardware) cannot be changed, upgraded or extended. The available internal storage is fixed for the entire life of the device. If you run out of internal storage for your documents, photos and other data, you will forever struggle and become a source of frustration. It is far better to have more storage than you need, than to need more storage than you have.

Choosing a low-capacity iPad may initially be attractive due to their lower cost, but may ultimately become false economy as device software updates make increasing demands upon a device's limited available resources, in particular internal storage that is used for the OS and associated software assets in addition to user data. For iPadOS 26, you might reasonably anticipate +20GB being required for the OS and System assets (e.g. Apple Intelligence) plus 10-20GB being needed for caches and system data.

When selecting an iPad, a good rule of thumb is to quantify how much data storage you will need for your own data - add a healthy margin - then double it. If you are unable to quantify your data storage needs, it becomes more difficult. Whilst I and others cannot make definitive recommendations for your personal needs, objectively I would council against purchase of any iPad with any less than 256GB storage, 512GB and higher having a greater margin for growth.

Within the Apple Support Communities we see regular tales of woe and disappointment when storage requirements are exceeded, necessitating replacement of the device; by contrast, we never see complaint of having too much available storage. It is relatively easy to fill limited internal storage space; perhaps consider higher tiers of storage as providing room for growth as your needs develop or mature - potentially extending the useful usable life of the device. 

Zurarczurx wrote:

If turning it off doesn't delete it then backup your iPand and restore it and you'll have the option to not use AI when you set it up again.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. "The option to not use AI when you set it up again." is just a toggle that is set for you during the setup process. It's the same toggle you can set for yourself later on after setup for turning off Apple Intelligence.

iPadOS will still download the assets required for Apple Intelligence regardless of the toggle and they will remain on the iPad taking up storage space regardless of if you want it or not. When the toggle is off, iPadOS itself will supposedly remove these assets as needed / when iPadOS feels that storage space is too low. I have never seen this happen though.

Bottom line is you cannot manually remove these assets yourself.

You can turn off Apple Intelligence by following the directions at the end of this article.

Use Apple Intelligence on your iPad - Apple Support

However, I'm not sure if this will actually free up any storage space on your iPad. It might simply disable access to Apple Intelligence features.

Thanks - I didn't realize that. I've just checked my iPad, which I've had less than a month, and it has 7.4GB of storage for AI. I don't know why the OP's is almost twice as large, but a restore might help.

I know the OP can't do much about it, but 64GB is a very small amount of storage these days. On my iPad the OS, AI and System Data total 35GB and these will undoubtedly grow with future updates

If turning it off doesn't delete it then backup your iPand and restore it and you'll have the option to not use AI when you set it up again.

r.w.b wrote:

So I'll reset the iPad and drop back to an earlier OS. I don't need the new features, for this device.

As Jonathan Burger stated, you can't backdate iPadOS. And don't bother going through all the trouble of resetting, then restoring iPadOS (it will reinstall the same version) as it will do nothing to get rid of Apple Intelligence. Unfortunately, you were given an erroneous solution. See my other post in this topic.

You can’t downgrade iOS.

You really have an obsolescent device. The smallest current iPad has 128 GB, and an iPad Air can go up to 1 TB.