DuckDuckGo Is Amping Up Its AI Search Tool

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: DuckDuckGo has big plans for embedding AI into its search engine. The privacy-focused company just announced that its AI-generated answers, which appear for certain queries on its search engine, have exited beta and now source information from across the web -- not just Wikipedia. It will soon integrate web search within its AI chatbot, which has also exited beta. DuckDuckGo first launched AI-assisted answers -- originally called DuckAssist -- in 2023. The feature is billed as a less obnoxious version of tools like Google's AI Overviews, designed to offer more concise responses and let you adjust how often you see them, including turning the responses off entirely. If you have DuckDuckGo's AI-generated answers set to "often," you'll still only see them around 20 percent of the time, though the company plans on increasing the frequency eventually.

Some of DuckDuckGo's AI-assisted answers bring up a box for follow-up questions, redirecting you to a conversation with its Duck.ai chatbot. As is the case with its AI-assisted answers, you don't need an account to use Duck.ai, and it comes with the same emphasis on privacy. It lets you toggle between GPT-4o mini, o3-mini, Llama 3.3, Mistral Small 3, and Claude 3 Haiku, with the advantage being that you can interact with each model anonymously by hiding your IP address. DuckDuckGo also has agreements with the AI company behind each model to ensure your data isn't used for training.

Duck.ai also rolled out a feature called Recent Chats, which stores your previous conversations locally on your device rather than on DuckDuckGo's servers. Though Duck.ai is also leaving beta, that doesn't mean the flow of new features will stop. In the next few weeks, Duck.ai will add support for web search, which should enhance its ability to respond to questions. The company is also working on adding voice interaction on iPhone and Android, along with the ability to upload images and ask questions about them. ... [W]hile Duck.ai will always remain free, the company is considering including access to more advanced AI models with its $9.99 per month subscription.

Think I might already have turned this off!

[locofungus]

Pretty much every search tool has added an AI that generates "answers" and IME, every single one of them has generated useless "answers".

99 time out of 100 when I search for something it's because I want to confirm something that I'm pretty sure I already know. Links to sites like cppreference are the things I look out for.

And that remaining 1% of the time, my problem is not knowing how to phrase the query - and while that's the time I'd expect AI to possibly be able to help, in practice it's worse than useless, filling up the screen with stuff I already knew or is rephrasing the question in a useless way and meaning there are fewer links visible that might give me that "ah ha" moment.

Here, for example, is a "difficult question to search" (I know the answer to this one, and it would take 60 seconds to write a program to test it, but I don't know where the standard actually defines this behaviour)

If you capture a reference in a lambda as a copy, do you get a copy of the object or a copy of the reference?

[not valid code]

int& ref;
auto lambda = [ref]() {
};

Re:

[freedizzle]

You get a copy. But this is more of a question about how references work than how lambda capture clauses do.

Also, in C++ we can actually make copies of references with std::reference_wrapper. I recently found this useful for providing callers with a flattened views of data in a map.

Re:

[locofungus]

You get a copy.

Yes, I know and I said that I know, but where does it actually say that?

I finally managed to find it here under ClosureType::Captures

https://en.cppreference.com/w/... [cppreference.com]

The type of each data member is the type of the corresponding captured entity, except if the entity has reference type (in that case, references to functions are captured as lvalue references to the referenced functions, and references to objects are captured as copies of the referenced objects).

Because it is just Bing

[RazorSharp]

DuckDuckGo is just an attempt to make Bing seem more palatable. It is like a puppet state for Microsoft and it is clear that the whole privacy bit is a sham. It is privacy EXCEPT when it comes to Microsoft. That is not privacy.

Data needs updated, latest superbowl winner

[jfdavis668]

Q: Latest Superbowl winner. A: As of my last update in October 2023, the most recent Super Bowl winner was the Kansas City Chiefs, who won Super Bowl LVII (57) on February 12, 2023, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles. If you're looking for information beyond that, I recommend checking the latest sports news sources.

Failure to understand its own clients

[sinij]

People don't use DuckDuckGo because it is better search engine than Google, they use it to minimize tracking and Google manipulation. Having AI, even if implemented judiciously, is exactly the kind of option than their own clients will see as anti-feature.

Re:

[Lproven]

Agreed.

"AI" is the last thing I want. I have changed my browser settings to _block_ "AI" generated results.

I did not know DDG was run by the same sort of idiotic blind fashion-followers. This is sad news.

Re:Failure to understand its own clients

[Pseudonymous Powers]

In my case, I use DuckDuckGo specifically because Google search has slowly become shit over the last decade or so, and now has rapidly become reeking ape shit since they started dedicated the first screen of results to a confident liar.

Re:

[jenningsthecat]

In my case, I use DuckDuckGo specifically because Google search has slowly become shit over the last decade or so, and now has rapidly become reeking ape shit since they started dedicated the first screen of results to a confident liar.

I use DDG for privacy, but occasionally find myself switching to Google because IME its results are sometimes still a little bit better. But yes, Google became increasingly and vastly shittier over many years, and DDG has improved a little bit over the past three years or so, to the point where it has about met Google on the (very) low side of the middle.

I still find myself missing Alta Vista. I know it couldn't wade through the cesspool of utter shit which is today's internet - but man, I long for search r

Re:

[jonadab]

Yeah, nobody maintains a really *good* general-purpose web index right now. Bing's is currently the best but leaves a LOT to be desired.

Until a few months ago, Google's was good, but then they unilaterally delisted almost the entire purely-informational segment of the web, leaving mostly things that are for sale, a few major sites that are too big to delist (e.g., Wikipedia), and official government sites. Basically, they made Google Shopping their primary service and dropped the general-purpose web index

Re:

[Un-Thesis]

This is the second comment on this story that uses the acronym "IME" and I have no idea what it means, nor do I remember ever seeing it!

Re:Failure to understand its own clients

[martin-boundary]

You're quite right. I've been wondering lately why the search quality of DuckDuckGo has seemed to worsen on my queries, compared with a year ago. Anecdotal, perhaps, but suspicious, definitely.

All I want from a search engine is to find all documents whose contents include my search phrase, in order of most likely to least likely what I am looking for.

It seems too much to ask.

Re:Failure to understand its own clients

[jhecht]

I'm with you. I have given up on Google because their AI answers are garbage, and DuckDuckGo is simpler and more reliable. Most answers I get from AI are wrong, and they don't understand my questions. If they don't offer a way to turn the AI off, I'm going to start looking elsewhere.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

That's true. Some people are against AI because they are individuals, and don't want to blindly follow the herd of those who are against AI.

Please forgive me, I couldn't help myself

[hyades1]

"The feature is billed as a less obnoxious version of tools like Google's AI Overviews..."

So a DuckDuckGo feature is "billed"?

Happy Friday. I'll let myself out.

"less oboxious" is good?

[stickman393]

> The feature is billed as a less obnoxious version of tools like Google's AI Overviews,

Less obnoxious - but still obnoxious. Our users will love it!

Or, for f***s sake

[NovusPeregrine]

I switched to Duck Duck To recently explicitly to escape Google and Bing's AI tools. Why, exactly, do they think adding one is a great plan?

AI-less search alternatives

[LuniticusTheSane]

Is there a better alternative to just using Google with udm=14? I want to patronize a search engine that isn't using AI garbage.

Re:

[markdavis]

>"Is there a better alternative to just using Google"

Why would you ever use Google?? I haven't done that in many, many years. Use StartPage, which is Google search results without AI and is anonymous (so no Google tracking)

https://startpage.com/ [startpage.com]

Useful tool

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say other than Googles AI summaries, duckduckgo's AI snippet is often very helpful. They got how to do it.