DuckDuckGo leans further into GenAI as its AI chat interface exits beta

[highplainsdem]

Source: TechCrunch

Private search engine DuckDuckGo is leaning further into the generative AI opportunity.

The non-tracking search engine has been dabbling with expanding the role of AI assistance in its product for the past year, including launching a chatbot-style interface last fall — available at Duck.ai. In a blog post Thursday, the company said the service is now exiting beta. It’s also now simply called Duck.ai, replacing the longer, mouthful name DuckDuckGo AI Chat.

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Simultaneously, the company is dialing up its use of GenAI in its conventional search engine interface — at duck.com or duckduckgo.com — by expanding the frequency that the search engine shows AI-assisted answers in response to a query. These are generative AI text summaries that can appear in response to search queries, above the usual blue links.

“We now serve millions of AI-assisted answers daily. If you opt to show them often in our traditional search results, they should appear over 20% of the time,” the company writes.

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Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/duckduckgo-leans-further-into-genai-as-its-ai-chat-interface-exits-beta/

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DuckDuckzGo's AI-assisted answers come with the warning "May contain inaccuracies."

I typed in the name of a guitarist, got a two-sentence answer and links to the pages on that guitarist at Wikipedia and Last.fm. It looked as though the AI had lifted the first sentence of its answer almost verbatim from the first two sentences on Wikipedia.

Besides the problem of inaccuracies, AI search steals traffic from the websites it steals information from. The more AI search is used, the less likely it is that those websites will continue to exist. The tech bros behind AI search have admitted that their goal is to keep people on their search page, rather than having them use it to reach other sites - and to hell with all those sites.

[dchill]

1. It's really too bad there's not enough real intelligence to go around.

That would be great.

[mwmisses4289]

2. Someone here on DU suggested

that when you type your query into a search engine, you add "-ai" . For example, if you type in "good seeds to grow in my area -ai" you won't get ai generated responses. It seems to work. There was also a slightly ruder way that also seemed to work, but I don't recall it.

[synni]

3. DuckDuckGo has an option to switch it off

I just used it a few minutes ago, after deleting the cookies from my browser.