AI is the hot trend right now, with Microsoft publicly testing Bing AI, and Google working on its own AI-powered search features. DuckDuckGo is entering the game with something a bit different.

DuckDuckGo has many products, but it’s now delving into the realms of AI. It has announced the first of its takes on how it’ll use generative AI to improve its product. It’s called DuckAssist and, well, you can think of it as a simplified version of what Bing AI and ChatGPT are currently doing. Unlike those two, though, DuckAssist is more limited in scope. It won’t write you an email or actively think of a recipe with the three vegetables you currently have in your fridge. In fact, it’s not a chatbot at all.

Instead, DuckAssist will limit itself to providing simple answers to simple questions. It will pull up information from multiple, handpicked sources, such as Wikipedia and Britannica, and scan those sources in order to appropriately give you an answer.

This is done to tackle a big problem that exists with generative AI chatbots right now — the fact that they often blurt out inaccurate or downright fake/made-up info. If the AI only has access to an extremely limited handpicked pool of information to work with, this should be less of a problem. And if something is inaccurate (one of the sources it’ll use is Wikipedia, for one, which can be edited by anyone), you’ll probably come across the inaccurate info anyway when you do your own research by hand.

Instead of having an AI chatbot that tries to do everything, DuckDuckGo’s AI tries to be good at one specific thing — answering questions. It’s meant to complement the existing search experience. As of now, though, it’s a beta. You might see it on some of your searches, but in most cases, it won’t show up. It’ll be more present in your search experience in the next few weeks, though, assuming testing goes well.

Source: DuckDuckGo Blog