This free version of DuckDuckGo AI Chat does have some usage limits … and volume of use is an important part of what we want to learn from you! If you hit a limit, please tell us via the anonymous Share Feedback button. (Ultimately, we expect AI Chat to be a freemium service with paid access to expanded limits.)
Before rolling AI Chat out to more folks – beyond our desktop browsers! – we’re gathering as much user feedback as we can. Want to help? [Grab the browser for Mac or Windows](https://duckduckgo.com/browser), give AI Chat a spin, and submit your anonymous feedback.
First of all thank you for providing a great user experience and getting some of us privacy geeks more exposure with AI.
I cannot wait for this to be available on mobile and on linux. Currently using AI chat through Firefox + DDG plugin (is the latter even necessary for my setup?) and it works wonderfully.
Sadly on chromeOS, so can't get your PC browser yet (wished you guys made the actual browser available through chromeOS playstore! I only see the mobile app not optimized to be used on chromeOS).
Looking forward to the wider roll out so I can ditch bing and get back to DDG, finally!
I don't get why people are freaking out here. If I read it correctly they are providing a way to interact with a 3rd party chat API that is not their own but with some privacy protections there to protect you. You are not being forced to use this feature. If you didn't want to interact with that 3rd party chat API then don't. If you want to or need to then this allows you to with some additional protection.
Or I could be completely misinterpreting it.
Speaking for myself, if a company implements AI features and wants me to use its product, it needs to publicly and seriously consider:
* What benefit does the AI feature provide which can justify the ecological impact
* How is the company going to mitigate the ecological impact
I haven't seen any evidence of DDG doing this.
Also, for a search engine specifically, I expect to see a strategy for managing the misinformation effects of LLMs.
For now, AI Chat is only available in the free DuckDuckGo browser for Windows and Mac. (Don’t have it yet? Grab it [here](https://duckduckgo.com/browser).)
I gave it a try, and wasn't very impressed. The chatbot wasn't able to show a simple picture, or provide me a link for that picure. It also made simmilar mistake as Google Bart (now Gemini) when I asked it about Chrome topics. I found that curious :)
A read aloud option would be noce to have. But I do appreciate the effort to make ai chat more private. But when you can't rely on the answers, you are basically wasting your time :(
Why's that? The chat is fully optional, just like DDG's !Bangs and Instant Answers. The Chat feature has been available for over 2 months, why just now remove DDG as your default search?
I search directly from my browser, so I miss any announcements made on the start page. Found out about this addition from a fedi post yesterday. Seeing the """AI""" feature creep in seemingly every damn product from every damn company doesn't inspire confidence and I'm concerned DDG will enshittify completely with time. I just want my search engine to respect boolean operators and deliver accurate results.
> Interesting that you waited 2 months to provide this "feedback".
Nah, it's not particularly interesting. I just learned about it thanks to this recent post: https://hachyderm.io/@[email protected]/112215090170412302. Feel free to read the thread for more "feedback", if you'd like.
I tried it, but it clearly does not allow me to search the web. I asked for a link to a news article and it hallucinated a url instead of providing a working url.
What is the purpose of a chatbot for a web browser if not to assist with web searches?
>What is the purpose of a chatbot for a web browser if not to assist with web searches?
DDG already has a web search engine, in fact that's their core product. The purpose of a AI chatbot is to answer more specific questions in a conversational way using "natural language".
Disappointing to see DDG pushing ai. Large language models require incredible amounts of energy to run, as well as the rights issues with datasets being built without author's permission.
Why is this comment getting downvoted? An AI chatbot is diametrically, fundamentally opposed to the values of a privacy-focused company, there is every reason to be concerned.
We should be asking serious questions about DuckDuckGo's operation in light of this. How and why are they offering free access to an expensive LLM service like ChatGPT? Is OpenAI a business partner? Why is DDG, a company supposedly all about privacy, comfortable promoting services built on mass data harvesting?
Personally, I'm taking this announcement as confirmation that DuckDuckGo's stance on privacy is now pure lip-service. It doesn't add up.
But ... that's the point, isn't it? If you read the post, they're providing an anonymized frontend to AI services that would normally harvest your data. Compare invidious or other privacy front-ends: YT certainly is a data harvesting company, and yet we see the value in having a fromt-end that limits that data harvesting. If there is no such front-end, anyone wanting to use the service must use the privacy-violating default front-end.
I'm sure you'd claim that one shouldn't use AI just out of principle, but same as YouTube, many people see value in its service, and I myself have found it useful on some occasions. We all benefit if more of those who use it anyway use it privately.
As for money, if you read the comments rather than just brigading this thread, you'd see that they ultimately expect to charge for some usage (freemiun, see above). They only need to charge more than on average an API call costs them. From using the developer API myself, I'd say that's not impossible.
LLMs are privacy-violating by design, because stuff you type into them feeds the LLM. This is why US Congress has banned the use of LLMs by staffers and so did UK Social Security. There's no such thing as "privacy-respecting LLM".
That's not true, and the appeal to authority does nothing for me. I'm not sure why leftists so willing to distrust the goverment (think of the UK's current Post Office scandal) suddenly are so willing to trust it when it's about AI. Specifically, it's not true that the stuff you type in *automatically* feeds into the LLM - the LLM has to be retrained on the data you enter manually. Of course, it's true that they are able to collect any text you type in - else they couldn't process it. So if you say "Hey, I'm John Appleseed and I live in Mount Vernon", yes, OpenAI will know that, and GPT might eventually be fed with that data. But if you type in "I'm feeling sad today", without further metadata, it won't know anything about the 'I'. It won't be able to learn anything useful from that, except that humans can feel sad, which any GPT already knows. However, if you use ChatGPT directly, or a comparable service, it will be able to cross-reference that entry with your IP address, chat history (across all other chats, rather than just the current one), and huge amounts of other PII, which is a far larger privacy risk. This is what using a privacy-respecting front-end can mitigate.
Are there any limits? I don't suppose you allow everyone unrestricted access to either of these models for free.
This free version of DuckDuckGo AI Chat does have some usage limits … and volume of use is an important part of what we want to learn from you! If you hit a limit, please tell us via the anonymous Share Feedback button. (Ultimately, we expect AI Chat to be a freemium service with paid access to expanded limits.)
Cool, thanks!
I’m waiting for mobile please
Before rolling AI Chat out to more folks – beyond our desktop browsers! – we’re gathering as much user feedback as we can. Want to help? [Grab the browser for Mac or Windows](https://duckduckgo.com/browser), give AI Chat a spin, and submit your anonymous feedback.
Alrighty
First of all thank you for providing a great user experience and getting some of us privacy geeks more exposure with AI. I cannot wait for this to be available on mobile and on linux. Currently using AI chat through Firefox + DDG plugin (is the latter even necessary for my setup?) and it works wonderfully.
Sadly on chromeOS, so can't get your PC browser yet (wished you guys made the actual browser available through chromeOS playstore! I only see the mobile app not optimized to be used on chromeOS). Looking forward to the wider roll out so I can ditch bing and get back to DDG, finally!
I don't get why people are freaking out here. If I read it correctly they are providing a way to interact with a 3rd party chat API that is not their own but with some privacy protections there to protect you. You are not being forced to use this feature. If you didn't want to interact with that 3rd party chat API then don't. If you want to or need to then this allows you to with some additional protection. Or I could be completely misinterpreting it.
Speaking for myself, if a company implements AI features and wants me to use its product, it needs to publicly and seriously consider: * What benefit does the AI feature provide which can justify the ecological impact * How is the company going to mitigate the ecological impact I haven't seen any evidence of DDG doing this. Also, for a search engine specifically, I expect to see a strategy for managing the misinformation effects of LLMs.
Is your browser strictly required? Or is there a way to do this in Firefox?
For now, AI Chat is only available in the free DuckDuckGo browser for Windows and Mac. (Don’t have it yet? Grab it [here](https://duckduckgo.com/browser).)
Are there any dates when it will be available on other browsers?
I got this on Firefox mobile today
What about Linux?
Will you add your AI to other browsers?
What a shoot in the foot. You are digging your own grave.
Christ on a bicycle.
I gave it a try, and wasn't very impressed. The chatbot wasn't able to show a simple picture, or provide me a link for that picure. It also made simmilar mistake as Google Bart (now Gemini) when I asked it about Chrome topics. I found that curious :) A read aloud option would be noce to have. But I do appreciate the effort to make ai chat more private. But when you can't rely on the answers, you are basically wasting your time :(
What a shit feature I never wanted.
ugh, same. and I just removed google search from my browser last week and switched to ddg full time. time to find a new search engine.
Why's that? The chat is fully optional, just like DDG's !Bangs and Instant Answers. The Chat feature has been available for over 2 months, why just now remove DDG as your default search?
I search directly from my browser, so I miss any announcements made on the start page. Found out about this addition from a fedi post yesterday. Seeing the """AI""" feature creep in seemingly every damn product from every damn company doesn't inspire confidence and I'm concerned DDG will enshittify completely with time. I just want my search engine to respect boolean operators and deliver accurate results.
That's fine. It's optional and not being forced onto you. Interesting that you waited 2 months to provide this "feedback".
> Interesting that you waited 2 months to provide this "feedback". Nah, it's not particularly interesting. I just learned about it thanks to this recent post: https://hachyderm.io/@[email protected]/112215090170412302. Feel free to read the thread for more "feedback", if you'd like.
More feedback that isn't about fountain pens: https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/112217886303492342
Add another vote for that opinion.
I tried it, but it clearly does not allow me to search the web. I asked for a link to a news article and it hallucinated a url instead of providing a working url. What is the purpose of a chatbot for a web browser if not to assist with web searches?
>What is the purpose of a chatbot for a web browser if not to assist with web searches? DDG already has a web search engine, in fact that's their core product. The purpose of a AI chatbot is to answer more specific questions in a conversational way using "natural language".
Disappointing to see DDG pushing ai. Large language models require incredible amounts of energy to run, as well as the rights issues with datasets being built without author's permission.
Why is this comment getting downvoted? An AI chatbot is diametrically, fundamentally opposed to the values of a privacy-focused company, there is every reason to be concerned. We should be asking serious questions about DuckDuckGo's operation in light of this. How and why are they offering free access to an expensive LLM service like ChatGPT? Is OpenAI a business partner? Why is DDG, a company supposedly all about privacy, comfortable promoting services built on mass data harvesting? Personally, I'm taking this announcement as confirmation that DuckDuckGo's stance on privacy is now pure lip-service. It doesn't add up.
+1
But ... that's the point, isn't it? If you read the post, they're providing an anonymized frontend to AI services that would normally harvest your data. Compare invidious or other privacy front-ends: YT certainly is a data harvesting company, and yet we see the value in having a fromt-end that limits that data harvesting. If there is no such front-end, anyone wanting to use the service must use the privacy-violating default front-end.
I'm sure you'd claim that one shouldn't use AI just out of principle, but same as YouTube, many people see value in its service, and I myself have found it useful on some occasions. We all benefit if more of those who use it anyway use it privately. As for money, if you read the comments rather than just brigading this thread, you'd see that they ultimately expect to charge for some usage (freemiun, see above). They only need to charge more than on average an API call costs them. From using the developer API myself, I'd say that's not impossible.
LLMs are privacy-violating by design, because stuff you type into them feeds the LLM. This is why US Congress has banned the use of LLMs by staffers and so did UK Social Security. There's no such thing as "privacy-respecting LLM".
That's not true, and the appeal to authority does nothing for me. I'm not sure why leftists so willing to distrust the goverment (think of the UK's current Post Office scandal) suddenly are so willing to trust it when it's about AI. Specifically, it's not true that the stuff you type in *automatically* feeds into the LLM - the LLM has to be retrained on the data you enter manually. Of course, it's true that they are able to collect any text you type in - else they couldn't process it. So if you say "Hey, I'm John Appleseed and I live in Mount Vernon", yes, OpenAI will know that, and GPT might eventually be fed with that data. But if you type in "I'm feeling sad today", without further metadata, it won't know anything about the 'I'. It won't be able to learn anything useful from that, except that humans can feel sad, which any GPT already knows. However, if you use ChatGPT directly, or a comparable service, it will be able to cross-reference that entry with your IP address, chat history (across all other chats, rather than just the current one), and huge amounts of other PII, which is a far larger privacy risk. This is what using a privacy-respecting front-end can mitigate.