DuckDuckGo has become the latest to convert from a ‘dumb’ search engine into an AI-boosted one. The privacy-focused search engine on Wednesday unveiled an AI feature called DuckAssist that summarises results into an 'Instant Answer.' Unlike ChatGPT and Bing Chat, DuckAssist isn’t a chatbot. Think of it as an alternative way to search. It taps online sources to give you a quick answer to your query (with citations) so that you don’t need to go digging around the web. “If you enter a question that can be answered by Wikipedia into our search box, DuckAssist may appear and use AI natural language technology to anonymously generate a brief, sourced summary of what it finds in Wikipedia — right above our regular private search results,” reads DuckDuckGo’s press release. Currently, DuckAssist’s scope is limited to just Wikipedia and “occasionally related sites like Britannica” but that will likely be changed in the future. The AI tool makes use of natural language technology from ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Anthropic to summarise. DuckDuckGo says that answers from this AI tool should be “more directly responsive to your actual question than traditional search results.” However, the search engine company recommends users ask questions like “what is a search engine index?” rather than more subjective questions like “what is the best search engine?”. AI-boosted search engines may sometimes “hallucinate” answers and get facts mixed up, especially when there’s more than one thing associated with a particular keyword. DuckDuckGo says it’s greatly reduced these by limiting its scope to Wikipedia rather than information from all over the web. The DuckAssist feature is completely free and is available for all as a beta with no sign-up required. DuckDuckGo also plans to release other AI-enhanced search and browsing features soon. DuckDuckGo is the latest to join the AI race among search engines to plug generative AI into their search results. This announcement comes after Brave implemented similar capabilities into its own search engine.
