Skip to main content

DuckDuckGo is taking on ChatGPT without busting your privacy

Privacy-focused web browser DuckDuckGo is adding artificial intelligence (AI) smarts to its search results with a new summarizer feature. It’s just the latest browser to integrate AI into its offerings, and suggests you can have both privacy and AI in the age of ChatGPT.

Dubbed DuckAssist, the tool takes your search query and generates an answer summary from Wikipedia, placing this synopsis at the top of your search results. In keeping with DuckDuckGo’s emphasis on privacy, DuckAssist works anonymously using AI natural language technology.

The DuckAssist tool in the DuckDuckGo web browser showing a search result with an AI-generated answer summary at the top.
DuckDuckGo

Right now, the feature is free to use and doesn’t require you to sign up or create an account. DuckDuckGo says DuckAssist is currently in beta, but it should be rolled out to all users in the coming weeks. Beyond that, DuckDuckGo is also working on a “series of generative AI-assisted features” that should arrive in the next few months.

Recommended Videos

DuckAssist works by scanning a “specific set of sources” to find its answers. That’s usually Wikipedia at the moment, but also includes related websites such as Britannica. Because it’s just taking information from one main source rather than collating data from several outlets, DuckDuckGo says DuckAssist should be less likely to “hallucinate” than similar tools from rivals.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Privacy-focused AI

The DuckAssist tool in the DuckDuckGo web browser showing a search result with an AI-generated answer summary at the top.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Because it’s based on natural language AI from OpenAI and Anthropic, DuckDuckGo says DuckAssist should be “more directly responsive to your actual question than traditional search results” you might get from the best web browsers. However, it will not be error-free, the developers say, and could struggle with finding the most relevant information and tackling particularly complex subjects. DuckDuckGo says it is working to improve the tool and its results, however.

If you’re concerned about your searches being shared with companies like OpenAI, DuckDuckGo says not to worry. Your browsing and search history is not saved or shared, and anything used to create DuckAssist summaries is private and anonymous. Your queries are not used to train the AI models used by OpenAI or Anthropic, either.

The explosion in popularity of AI tools like ChatGPT has raised a large number of concerns, but it seems DuckAssist could at least offer a more private alternative to tools like ChatGPT in Microsoft Bing. We’ll have to see how it develops over the coming weeks and months.

Alex Blake
Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…
Researchers call ChatGPT Search answers ‘confidently wrong’
ChatGPT search

ChatGPT was already a threat to Google Search, but ChatGPT Search was supposed to clench its victory, along with being an answer to Perplexity AI. But according to a newly released study by Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, ChatGPT Search struggles with providing accurate answers to its users' queries.

The researchers selected 20 publications from each of three categories: Those partnered with OpenAI to use their content in ChatGPT Search results, those involved in lawsuits against OpenAI, and unaffiliated publishers who have either allowed or blocked ChatGPT’s crawler.

Read more
ChatGPT explores ads as it works toward 1 billion users
A person typing on a laptop that is showing the ChatGPT generative AI website.

More users and more profit -- that's the aim for ChatGPT going into 2025.

ChatGPT has broken into the top 10 websites on the internet according to some statistics, and a new report says it's pursuing the lofty 1 billion user milestone in the coming year. The company plans to do this primarily by investing in its own data centers, in addition to deploying several advertising strategies, according to the Financial Times.

Read more
There’s a new way to use ChatGPT on your iPhone. Here’s how it works
Someone holding the iPhone 16 Pro with its display on.

There is a new way to access ChatGPT on Apple's iPhone and iPad. As reported by MacRumors, the latest version of the ChatGPT app makes it even easier to access the app's SearchGPT feature.

ChatGPT, a sophisticated AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, utilizes an ever-growing dataset to answer questions, write stories, summarize factual topics, translate languages, and create creative content. It is available on Apple devices through the ChatGPT app, and it is expected to be integrated into Siri in a future version of Apple Intelligence.

Read more