DuckDuckGo rolls out AI Chat for anonymous conversations with AI models
DuckDuckGo — the privacy-first web browser — announced the rollout of its AI Chat feature to all users on Thursday (May 6). The feature was previously available to select users in beta access, allowing them to anonymously converse with artificial intelligence (AI) models. It has now been rolled out for free to all users of the limited-access web browser, with a paid subscription also available.
AI chat on DuckDuckGo
In a blog afterThe company announced that AI Chat currently supports four AI models (two proprietary and two open-source) – Open AI’s GPT 3.5 Turbo, Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku, Meta’s Llama 3, and Mistral’s Mixtral 8x7B. According to the company’s claims, the chats are private and none of them are used to train the AI models. The terms and conditions listed by DuckDuckGo state that because it calls the AI models on behalf of the user, their personal information such as IP addresses are not exposed.
It further claims that users can have conversations with the AI Chat without having to worry about their privacy, as the conversations are anonymized. DuckDuckGo says that it has agreements with the vendors of the AI models that limit how much data they can use from anonymous prompts from users. Additionally, the data cannot be used to “develop or improve their models.”
The company claims the agreement also includes the deletion of all received data within 30 days (with limited exceptions for security and legal compliance). “The underlying model providers may temporarily store chats, but there is no way for them to tie chats back to you, personally, as all metadata is deleted,” it claims.
How to use AI Chat
DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat can be accessed via multiple entry points, such as URLs and shortcuts. Upon reaching the homepage, the user is presented with a choice of four AI models. The chat window offers preset prompts, such as “Get computer help,” “Understand a topic,” or “Write an email.”
Once the conversation is over, the text box fire button can be used to clear the chat window. If users want to change the AI model, they can click on the AI model name in the left panel and select one of the three other options.
DuckDuckGo says its roadmap includes “adding more chat models and browser entry points.” It’s also working on a paid subscription plan for AI Chat, as well as incorporating more AI models.
