DuckDuckGo, a search firm, launched a free and nameless AI Chat service in June 2024. AI Chat joins DuckAssist, which generates solutions primarily based on Wikipedia, as a strategy to discover matters with AI. AI Chat operates with the extensively used prompt-and-response course of popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
However DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat seeks to reduce potential privateness issues by design. AI Chat presents nameless entry: No account, username, e-mail handle, or password wanted. DuckDuckGo guarantees that your prompts and knowledge is not going to be used to coach any of the AI fashions. This implies you shouldn’t fear about content material out of your queries being embedded in a response delivered to different folks.
As of September 2024, AI Chat allows you to select to talk with any of 4 chat fashions:
- GPT-4o mini from OpenAI.
- Claude 3 Haiku from Anthropic.
- Llama 3.1 70B, an open-source mannequin from Meta.
- Mixtral 8x7B, an open-source mannequin from Mistral AI, a French firm.
You could swap between fashions at any time, permitting you to match responses. General, DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat supplies a easy and free strategy to work together with 4 completely different massive language fashions anonymously.
Get began with DuckDuckGo AI Chat
Open a browser on a telephone, laptop, or pill linked to the web, then:
- Go to duck.ai (or duckduckgo.com/chat) and choose the Get Began button.
- Subsequent, select a chat mannequin. Most individuals will wish to settle for the default possibility of GPT-4o mini from OpenAI. (You could swap and experiment with a special mannequin any time.)
- Overview the privateness coverage and phrases of use, after which choose the I Agree button if the phrases are acceptable.
- You may then use AI Chat a lot as you’ll another AI chat system: Enter your immediate, look forward to the response, after which proceed the chat as you would like.
Entry AI Chat with search or bangs
DuckDuckGo additionally allows you to swap to an AI Chat from a search. On a search outcomes web page, choose the Chat menu merchandise to transform your search question to an AI Chat immediate. The textual content of your search phrases shall be positioned within the immediate field, so you possibly can modify it earlier than you ship the immediate to the system.
DuckDuckGo bang search shortcuts additionally provide !ai and !chat choices. Put both of those shortcuts firstly of a DuckDuckGo search to convey the content material to the AI Chat system, quite than a regular search. DuckDuckGo presents hundreds of bangs that assist you to ship your search not solely to DuckDuckGo providers but additionally to 3rd events, corresponding to Google (!g) or Wikipedia (!w).
AI Chat decisions: Copy, change, clear, or proceed
Choose the copy icon — to the top-right of every response — to repeat the textual content of a response to your system’s clipboard. Then it’s possible you’ll paste the content material right into a word, doc, e-mail, or textual content discipline. Since your prompts and responses aren’t linked to an account, ensure to repeat after which save elsewhere any response you wish to discuss with later. To the best of the copy icon is a redo button, a circle with an arrow, that you could be use to trigger the system to generate one other response to your immediate.
Not proud of the response you obtain from one mannequin? Change to a special AI Chat mannequin: Choose the Settings icon to the best of the chosen mannequin identify, select your required mannequin, after which choose the “Begin a brand new chat” button. Experiment with the accessible fashions by prompting every with quite a lot of questions and duties. You’ll discover that not solely will the response particulars differ, but additionally that the format might differ as nicely.
Completed with a thread or prepared to debate a special subject? Choose the hearth icon subsequent to the immediate field to clear the dialog. This erases all content material in your chat, so ensure you’ve copied (and saved) any generated content material from the chat beforehand.
Lastly, one main distinction between commonplace search and AI chat is that you may proceed the dialog and ask follow-up questions. For instance, a typical DuckDuckGo search will present a set of hyperlinks and presumably some key data. If you would like a special set of hyperlinks, you’d re-do your search. With AI Chat, you possibly can ask an entire collection of follow-up inquiries to immediate the system to elaborate on a specific element or present further choices.
AI Chat limitations and options
One notable limitation of AI Chat and all 4 accessible fashions: They lack entry to present web content material. The responses are restricted to knowledge accessible as of their coaching date. So, if you wish to know details about upcoming or current occasions, swap to a regular search.
A number of net browser-accessible options to AI Chat are programs corresponding to:
- OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
- Microsoft’s Copilot.
- Google’s Gemini.
- Anthropic’s Claude.
- Meta’s Llama.
One other various is to obtain, set up, and configure a big language mannequin system, corresponding to Jan, Ollama, or Nomic’s GPT4All. Those that need entry to the highest-rated AI chat programs will seemingly choose to pay — round $20 per thirty days in every case — for ChatGPT Plus, Gemini Superior, or Claude Professional.
