DuckDuckGo brings ChatGPT, Meta AI, and other chatbots to its browser

DuckDuckGo AI Chat

Joining the AI bandwagon is privacy-centric browser DuckDuckGo with a new feature called AI Chat. Like it always does, DuckDuckGo is pitching it as a secure and private way to access gen AI chatbots. What’s interesting is that DuckDuckGo will allow users to access Open AI's GPT 3.5 Turbo, Anthropic's Claude 3 Haiku, and two open-source models (Meta Llama 3 and Mistral's Mixtral 8x7B). The company said that it plans to bring more models to power AI Chat. “We view AI Chat and search as two different but powerful tools to help you find what you’re looking for – especially when you’re exploring a new topic,” said the company in a blog post.

How will AI chat work on DuckDuckGo?

Users will have the option to pick their chat model and start using it like any other gen AI chatbot. “Just like searches on DuckDuckGo, all chats are completely anonymous: they cannot be traced back to any one individual,” said ChatGPT.

What DuckDuckGo does is that it calls the underlying chat models on your behalf, removes your IP address completely and using its own IP address instead. “This way it looks like the requests are coming from us and not you,” the company explained. Users can access the Fire Button to clear the chat and start over.

DuckDuckGo says that it does not save or store any chats. “To respond with answers and ensure all systems are working, the underlying model providers may store chats temporarily, but there’s no way for them to tie chats back to you, personally, since all metadata is removed,” the company explained.

Even if you enter your name or other personal information into the chat, the model providers have no way of knowing who typed it in – you, or someone else, DuckDuckGo added.

As of now, AI Chat is free to use within a daily limit. However, a paid option might come in the future. “We are planning to keep the current level of access free and exploring a paid plan for access to higher limits and more advanced (and costly) chat models,” the company said.