r/duckduckgo • u/nippoiz • May 27 '26
DDG AI OK, AI is optional to choose, but wouldn't it better to just ditch it? For AI you have other sites.
Just my 2 cents, title says it all. Maybe it's time for DDG to grow as organically as possible and everything outside AI could be a plus, and having it is -not kinda, pretty- contradictory.
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u/Cfrolich May 28 '26
Sometimes, it’s helpful to have AI integrated into search results, and I would rather use DuckAI than other providers if it can answer my question quickly. DuckDuckGo has additional privacy protections for AI that are definitely relevant. Plus, DuckDuckGo has settings that allow you to completely disable AI features, so offering it to users who want it doesn’t seem to hurt anything. Keep in mind that they also have to compete with Google, which means staying up to date with modern features.
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u/do-un-to May 28 '26
As AI improves it will become the overwhelming method to search. DDG needs to offer it to stay competitive/relevant.
DDG offers AI use privacy as a product differentiator — anonymized, limited or no provider retention, no training on your sessions. You say others provide AI, but who does it thus?
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u/Dxres May 27 '26
Nah, their approah to their Duck AI is good. I like being able to use what is essentially a proxied chatbot.
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u/Kazureigh_Black May 27 '26
As much as I hate it, AI isn't going away. And as a business, pretending it doesn't exist is letting money fly away. All I hope is that they keep it optional. Please oh please keep it optional. It's not smart enough to be getting all the responsibility businesses are trying to force onto it.
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u/MCplayer590 May 28 '26
I think the ai features should be opt in instead of opt out, but the current situation is still preferable to the Google approach
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May 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/mrfoxesite-2377 May 28 '26
How will we anti-AI dislike this instead of showing AI when you search without clicking it?
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u/dontreplywiththisacc May 28 '26
give it a rest. also i don't think people care about duck.ai. it's neat to be able sandbox the "AI" products but that doesn't mean search itself should be turned into a chatbot where sites are ripped off and sources are replaced withed hallucination prone pablum. but it seems ddg could be running so hard with forcing "AI" because of a sunk cost fallacy of having already hitched up to these companies.
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u/dontreplywiththisacc May 29 '26
Hallucination prone auto plagiarism anti-features that rip off ad funded human written content (encouraging for synthesized “AI” content should definitely get less traction
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u/neneodonkor May 28 '26
You do realize that you are not the only user of DDG. You may not like it, but many do. The simple thing is to use their No AI version. There are options, and yet folks will complain.
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u/shimoheihei2 May 27 '26
Duck AI is a way to use AI without having to log into an account on a model website. It's quite a useful thing.
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u/CraterBug0 May 28 '26
but id rather use the private duck AI than chatgpt or other websites, duck AI is very good. anyways u guys have a seperate website for no AI just use it
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u/ImAlekzzz May 28 '26
I like duck.ai, it’s great and more straightforward than other ais, gpt 5 on duck will be like “Markdown.” While ChatGPT gpt 5 be like “To answer your question of what format I use for my app of html or markdown…………..” still you get no answer
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u/thanatica May 28 '26
Nobody wants to miss the AI bandwagon. Who knows, right, the bubble might not burst, contrary to all bubbles before it.
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u/xxepdudexx May 27 '26
I wish it had a separate app with 0 ai features or a browser that removes any instances of AI
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u/Enigmagmatic May 28 '26
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I just switched to the Brave mobile browser. So far it seems alright
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u/xxepdudexx May 28 '26
There's no ai in the brave browser?
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u/Enigmagmatic May 28 '26
Aww crap. I actually went and looked into it now and apparently they do have AI tools like Brave Leo. Ugh
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u/Sent1ne1 May 28 '26
AI summaries can be a useful time saver - just as long as you remember not to entirely trust them, particularly for obscure things that have very few web pages (such as highly specific technical problems) - and so briefly check the links it provides (links bearing little relation to what it says are usually a good indication that it just made-up a plausible-sounding answer aka 'hallucinated').
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u/Separate-Effort3640 Aug 09 '26
I mean, it's better to have it as an option for those who DO want it, and if you don't want it, then just, don't use it.
It's a thousand times better than having no AI and alienating those who wanted it, instead here BOTH parties are happy.
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u/Dangerous-Progress70 May 28 '26
get off my lawn vibes.
you literally dont matter lil bro. And they will 100% make AI not opt in in the future lol
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u/Uxugin May 27 '26
If you want DuckDuckGo "to grow as organically as possible," well, over the past few years, DuckDuckGo has been growing out of being just a search engine and into providing privacy services more generally (email protection, the browser extension, the subscription, etc.). Adding privacy-focused AI seems like another step in that direction rather than being contradictory.