After Bing, Brave and Opera, DuckDuckGo goes AI with a function called DuckAssist. Based on the ChatGPT linguistic model, it provides answers based mainly on Wikipedia. A way to avoid drifts?
Since CharGPT was unveiled to the general public, many search engines are looking to capitalize on its success and incorporate artificial intelligence into their services. The first to take the plunge was Microsoft with Bing, soon followed by Google with its AI Bard – however this is not accessible to Internet users –, by Brave and by Opera, among others. Even social networks, like Snapchat and Facebook, are getting into it! It’s DuckDuckGo’s turn to launch its own ChatGPT-powered tool in beta. Called DuckAssist, it is available for free on desktop and mobile versions of the engine, with no registration required.
DuckAssist is not, however, a conversational AI like Prometheus in Bing, but rather a way to quickly find information drawn from Wikipedia. “DuckAssist is a new type of instant response in our search results, just like other topics on our engine. We’ve made sure it’s fully integrated with DuckDuckGo’s private search, taking on the look and feel of feeling of our traditional search results, so that its use is natural”explains Gabriel Weinberg, the CEO of the browser, in a statement.
DuckAssist: answers based on Wikipedia
In its publication, the American company explains that its tool is based on “OpenAI and Anthropic technologies”two companies both specialized in AI. NextImpact more accurately reports that “DuckAssist would use OpenAI’s Davinci model (a version of GPT-3 dating from 2019) and the Claude model from Anthropic”. Concretely, DuckAssist displays a brief summary of a few lines above the search results, in the form of a conversation bubble next to a “magic wand” icon, when the user formulates a question, such as “What is the best search engine? This summary avoids having to consult the links listed by DuckDuckGo.
To generate this summary, DuckAssist relies mainly on Wikipedia, but also on additional sources such as the Encyclopædia Britannica – others could be integrated later. The sources used to write the summary are systematically displayed in the interface. Additionally, because DuckAssist takes advantage of natural language technologies from OpenAI and Anthropic to summarize information, the answers should answer the question more directly than the search results. “While we know it’s not perfect, Wikipedia is relatively reliable on a wide variety of topics”explains Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo, pointing out that the encyclopedia is constantly updated.
DuckAssist: avoid drifts and hallucinations
By restricting the number of sources to which DuckAssist can access, the American company seeks to limit the risk of abuse. Indeed, generative artificial intelligences sometimes say things that are totally false when they cannot find the answer to a question – these are the famous hallucinations. Google paid the price with Bard, who made a mistake during his first official presentation. These restrictions also prevent the AI from adopting unstable behaviors. This was particularly the case of the new Bing tool, which simulated human feelings, refused to answer questions and even allowed itself to insult Internet users (see our article).
DuckDuckGo is committed to respecting its initial philosophy – the one that has made it successful – by respecting the privacy of Internet users and by securing the data, which is anonymous. The search engine does not share search or browsing history, or any personally identifiable information such as IP address. Also, anonymous queries will not be used to train their AI models. Currently, DuckAssist is only available in English on browser apps (iOS, Android, and Mac) and browser extensions (Firefox, Chrome, and Safari). The assistant is still in beta, which is why it may provide incorrect answers and therefore requires a little vigilance. For now, it will mainly provide summaries to “questions with simple answers”. Eventually, the AI should be able to process more complex queries, and summaries will appear more and more often in the interface. The company adds that it is only “the first in a series of AI-assisted generative features”which will be deployed in the coming months.