DuckDuckGo doesn’t want to be left behind in the generative AI race, so it’s launching a service of its own. Called DuckAssist, it is calling the new feature “first in a series of AI-assisted private search and browser updates.”
Available for free with no sign-up required, you can already try it through DuckDuckGo browsers and extensions.
Alas, it’s not as powerful as ChatGPT as at the moment, it only provides answers from a single source. Luckily, it’s a big source – Wikipedia, meaning you will still be able to get answers to just about any topic. Also, the feature will occasionally get information from related sites like Britannica.
On the other hand, you won’t be able to make it write a poem or an essay for yourself.
How does it work?
Available in beta, DuckAssist comes in the form of “Instant Answer” in DuckDuckGo’s search results. So, if you enter a question that can be answered by Wikipedia into the search box, DuckAssist may appear and use AI natural language technology to generate a brief, sourced summary of what it finds in Wikipedia — right above regular search results.
The company says DuckAssist is designed to be fully integrated into DuckDuckGo Private Search, mirroring the look and feel of our traditional search results — so while the AI-generated content is new, they hope using it feels second nature.
Currently, the DuckAssist beta is only available in English, but chances are – this too will also be expanded to include other languages. Again, this is a free feature that is also completely private (we love it for that), and there is no sign-up required.
Finally, in case you wonder, DuckDuckGo uses natural language technology from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Looking down the road…
There’s more coming to DuckDuckGo, with the company hoping to roll out additional capabilities in the coming months. But first, if everything goes as planned and users love what they’re getting from Instant Answers, they will roll it out to all DuckDuckGo search users in the coming weeks.
Initially, though, DuckAssist is most likely to appear in DuckDuckGo’s search results when users search for questions with straightforward answers in Wikipedia. These would be questions like “what is…” or “when something happened,” rather than more subjective questions like “what is the best search engine?”.
In other words, you won’t be seeing DuckAssist on many of your searches yet.
Nevertheless, we at VPN Reports love DuckDuckGo and like to see them growing in all kinds of ways. In the meantime, if you want to help them out – well, just use them and see if you can contribute while they’re in beta. Hopefully, they will soon expand on this capability by including additional sources to become even more relevant in the “search engine wars.”