DuckDuckGo, a search company, launched a free, anonymous AI-powered chat service in June 2024. AI Chat joins DuckAssist, which generates answers based on Wikipedia, as a way to explore topics with AI. AI Chat works on the widely used request-response process popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
But DuckDuckGo's AI chat aims to minimize potential privacy concerns by design. AI chat offers anonymous access—no account, username, email address, or password required. DuckDuckGo promises that your prompts and information will not be used to train any of the AI models. This means you don't have to worry about the content of your queries being incorporated into a response sent to others.
Starting in September 2024, AI Chat will let you choose to chat with any of four chat models:
- OpenAI's GPT-4o mini.
- Claude 3 Haiku by Anthropic.
- Llama 3.1 70B, an open source model of Meta.
- Mixtral 8x7B, an open source model from Mistral AI, a French company.
You can switch models at any time, allowing you to compare responses. Overall, DuckDuckGo's AI chat offers a free and easy way to interact with four different language models anonymously.
Get started with DuckDuckGo AI Chat
Open a browser on an Internet-connected phone, computer, or tablet, and then:
- Go to duck.ai (or duckduckgo.com/chat) and select the Get Started button.
- Next, choose a chat model. Most people will want to stick with OpenAI’s default GPT-4o mini. (You can switch and experiment with a different model at any time.)
- Review the privacy policy and terms of use, and then select the I Agree button if the terms are acceptable.
- You can then use AI Chat as you would any other AI chat system: enter your message, wait for a response, and then continue the chat as you wish.
Access AI chat with search or bangs
DuckDuckGo also lets you switch from a search to an AI chat. On a search results page, select the Chat menu item to turn your search query into an AI chat message. The text of your search terms will be placed in the message box, so you can edit it before sending the message to the system.
DuckDuckGo's search shortcuts also offer !ai and !chat options. Place either of these shortcuts at the beginning of a DuckDuckGo search to pass the content to the AI chat system, rather than a standard search. DuckDuckGo offers thousands of shortcuts that allow you to send your search not only to DuckDuckGo's services, but also to third parties, such as Google (!g) or Wikipedia (!w).
AI chat options: copy, change, delete or continue
Select the copy icon (at the top right of each response) to copy the text of a response to your device's clipboard. You can then paste the content into a note, document, email, or text field. Since your prompts and responses aren't tied to an account, be sure to copy and save elsewhere any responses you want to reference later. To the right of the copy icon is a redo button—a circle with an arrow—that you can use to have the system generate another response to your prompt.
Not happy with the response you receive from a model? Switch to another AI Chat model: select the Settings icon to the right of the selected model name, choose the model you want, and then select the “Start a new chat” button. Experiment with the available models by asking each one a variety of questions and tasks. You’ll notice that not only will the details of the response be different, but the format may vary as well.
Done with a thread or ready to talk about a different topic? Select the fire icon next to the message box to clear the conversation. This deletes all content from your chat, so make sure you've copied (and saved) any chat-generated content beforehand.
Finally, one important difference between standard search and AI chat is that you can continue the conversation and ask follow-up questions. For example, a typical search on DuckDuckGo will provide a set of links and possibly key information. If you want a different set of links, you'll have to re-run the search. With AI chat, you can ask a whole series of follow-up questions to get the system to explain a particular detail or provide additional options.
AI Chat Limitations and Alternatives
One notable limitation of AI Chat and the four available models is that they do not have access to up-to-date Internet content. Responses are limited to data available at the time of training. So when you want to find out about upcoming or recent events, switch to a standard search.
Some alternatives to AI Chat accessible from the web browser are systems such as:
- OpenAI's ChatGPT.
- Microsoft Copilot.
- Google Gemini.
- Claude from Anthropic.
- Flame of Meta.
Another alternative is to download, install, and configure a full-size language model system, such as Jan, Ollama, or Nomic's GPT4All. Those who want access to the top-rated AI chat systems will probably prefer to pay (around $20 per month each) for ChatGPT Plus, Gemini Advanced, or Claude Pro.
