Last year, DuckDuckGo introduced an AI chat feature that made ChatGPT queries private. Now, the company is expanding the AI capabilities of its browser to bring more “private, useful, and optional AI features” with popular chatbots.
By accessing the free Duck.ai feature, users can get AI-assisted answers daily without needing an account. The company says that users who opt to use these searches will see it over 20% of the time, as DuckDuckGo still prioritizes the current search feature.
Among the updates, the Duck.ai chat gets upgraded models, including the latest GPT-4o mini and o3-mini from OpenAI, Meta Llama 3.3, Mistral Small 3, and Claude 3 Haiku from Anthropic. There is also a Recent Chats feature to store conversations locally on your device and expanded sources across the web, as the AI-assisted answers now bring information in English-language queries outside the US.
In a blog post, DuckDuckGo explains why it made this change: “We’re finding that some people prefer to start in chat mode and then jump into more traditional search results when needed, while others prefer the opposite. (Some questions just lend themselves more naturally to one mode or the other, too.) So, we thought the best thing to do was offer both. We made it easy to move between them, and we included an off switch for those who’d like to avoid AI altogether.”
DuckDuckGo says you can use its AI by accessing the chatbot website via the optional chat icons within its search engine, browsers, or iOS widget. You can also use the “!AI” or “!chat” commands from any DuckDuckGo search.
The company also lets you choose how much AI you want in your searches from “Never” to “On-demand,” “Sometimes,” which is the default, and “Often,” which will make them appear over 20% of the time.
DuckDuckGo is also making sure users know where the information the AI-based was coming from. The Duck.ai feature is free to use, and no log-in is required. However, users might encounter a daily limit for chatting with the platform. In the future, the company might introduce a paid plan for access to “higher limits and more advanced and costly chat models.”
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