For those who don’t like using mainstream search engines like Google or Microsoft’s Bing, chances are you’re familiar with DuckDuckGo. Though now, companies behind said mainstream search engines are going pretty hard on generative AI integration, with Bard being on the way and Bing AI already being used, even if not by everyone. So naturally, DuckDuckGo needs its own. The company announced as much in a recent blog post, with the launch of the beta of what it calls DuckAssist.
According to the blog post in question, DuckAssist is similar to the Microsoft Bing AI, and in two ways at that. One is that it uses the natural language tech from OpenAI, as well as Anthropic. The other is that it provides a more conversational answer to search queries. Though the one key difference between the two is that DuckDuckGo’s AI only takes info from specific sources rather than around the whole world wide web. For now, this means Wikipedia, and “occasionally from related sites like Britannica”.
DuckDuckGo says that DuckAssist is only pulling info from specific sources for now so that it doesn’t “hallucinate”, or make things up and go on wild tangents. You’ll also get a source link at the end of the answer so you can double-check the accuracy of the info yourself. While this limits the answers that it can provide users, it is an understandable move considering the sort of things Bing AI has been saying.
(Source: DuckDuckGo)
