DuckDuckGo Launches Anonymous Access to Artificial Intelligence
by Tomáš Valouch, updated July 1, 2024
Popular web search engine DuckDuckGo, which places a high value on the privacy of its users, is launching a new DuckDuckGo AI Chat feature in search. Users can now access the most popular artificial intelligence directly from the search engine, with guaranteed anonymity and for free within a daily limit. This feature includes anonymous access to AI models such as Mixtral, Llama, Claude and GPT.
How does it all work?
All AI conversations are completely anonymous, as is searching through DuckDuckGo. Thus they cannot be traced back to a specific user, this is achieved by changing the IP address.
The AI version you choose is called first, while the metadata and your IP address are removed and replaced with the IP address from DuckDuckGo. All activity pretends to be created by DuckDuckGo.
Since privacy is emphasized, your conversation is not saved and always needs to be restarted. A fire icon is used to easily delete and start a new conversation with the AI. When you click on this icon, the entire AI conversation is deleted.
Complete confidence?
DuckDuckGo claims in its privacy policy and terms of use that it has contracts with AI providers. These contracts should guarantee that your conversations will not be used to train and improve AI and also that the model providers should delete the data and information once it is no longer needed and within 30 days.
If you want to be completely sure that even DuckDuckGo will not know and process your IP address we recommend using a virtual private network (VPN).
How do I access the feature?
The new feature can be found in the DuckDuckGo search engine, just type any term into the search box and start searching. Then under the search box you will find an icon called “chat”, clicking on this icon will take you to a room with the AI model of your choice.
Another way to access the feature is through the bar icon found in the top right hand corner of the search box, once you click on the icon you will see more options, along with the AI Chat feature.
Future of this feature
DuckDuckGo is looking to add more AI models in the future, as well as a self-hosting option. There are also plans to add a paid version that will guarantee a higher query limit and access to more advanced AI models.
