DuckDuckGo integrated AI responses into its privacy-centric search platform in 2023, and these features have now officially transitioned out of beta – though you still have the option to disable them.
Also making its debut outside of beta is complimentary, private access to the AI chatbot of your choice …
DuckDuckGo AI Search Results
A notable change introduced by Google was its AI Overview feature, showcased above search results. DuckDuckGo mirrored this with its Assist feature, initially available as a beta in 2023.
The company reports that Assist has now exited beta, extending its information sources beyond just Wikipedia.
Recent enhancements to AI-assisted answers now include a broader range of web sources, responses to English-language inquiries outside the U.S., and added customization options that allow you to control how frequently answers appear: often, sometimes (default), on-demand, or never.
You have control over how often AI responses are displayed, including the possibility to disable them entirely.
Visit the AI Features section in your search settings. If you appreciate our AI-assisted answers, set Assist to Often, which will ensure answers display over 20% of the time. Conversely, if you prefer not to see any AI features, switch Chat to Off and Assist to Never.
Duck.ai Provides Free, Private Access to Chatbots
Duck.ai has also exited beta, allowing you to interact with various AI models anonymously, without the need for an account, and assuring that your conversations are not utilized for AI training purposes.
To start chatting, explore Duck.ai (formerly known as DuckDuckGo AI Chat), a free and account-less platform for confidential access to popular AI chatbots. This includes continuously updated models like GPT-4o mini and o3-mini from OpenAI, open-source models Meta Llama 3.3 and Mistral Small 3, along with Claude 3 Haiku from Anthropic. Conversations are anonymized through proxying and are never used for training AI models.
You can access the service directly at https://duck.ai/ or through chat icons available in our search engine or browsers (currently there’s also a widget for iOS). Additionally, you can utilize the !ai or !chat bang search commands from any browser set to use DuckDuckGo as the default search engine.
Proxying ensures that your identity remains protected.
When we create AI-assisted responses, we anonymously engage the underlying AI models to summarize web sources on your behalf, ensuring that your personal information is never disclosed to third parties. This approach is termed proxying. Similarly, Duck.ai conversations operate under this framework. Technically, your IP address is completely removed, and our IP address is utilized instead, so the proxied requests originate from us, not you.
If you opt to retain recent conversations, they are stored locally on your device rather than on the company’s servers.
Image: DuckDuckGo
