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DuckDuckGo AI Chat (duckduckgo.com)
submitted 1 year ago by MoreCoffee@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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DDG is now offering free/private AI chat using several models.

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[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 83 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If they are using GPT-3.5 and Claude, that means that they are sending the chats to Open AI and Anthropic, right? How can they assure that the chats are private and not being used in training if they don’t control what other companies do?

Edit: ok, they claim to have agreements with them to delete chats within 30 days and they hide the user IP

[-] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 73 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

DDG's classic "Trust me bro" privacy policy.

I don't dislike DDG and I do use it, but goddamn I'd love to see a public audit of their privacy claims. DDG is closed source and they've only ever given Their Word ^TM^ about their claims. The privacy community puts a lot of faith in DDG despite not being able to test anything it says.

[-] shotgun_crab@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Every service that claims to be private should be obliged to have a recent public audit available as a proof

[-] TAG@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

That is how DDG search works as well. They take your search query and send it to a regular, data harvesting search engine. The engine does not see your IP address and cannot track you with a cookie but they can monitor the search queries of DDG users in aggregate.

[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

True, but anonymized search queries are much less personal than chats

[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

True, but anonymized search queries are much less personal than chats

[-] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

They delete the chats but the metadata is forever

[-] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

They say they proxy the requests. Deleting the chats after 30 days is meaningless, the data has already been utilized.

[-] TriLinder@lemmy.zip 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Its initial prompt:

[-] Kraiden@kbin.run 32 points 1 year ago

Aaaaand the DDG enshitification begins... continues? continues.

[-] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 30 points 1 year ago

Why do you call this enshitification, if it won't affect the normal searching and is entirely optional?

[-] Kraiden@kbin.run 4 points 1 year ago

Have they said that or are you just implying that? It's beta right now but I'd put money on them following in Google's footsteps and integrating right into the main search.

It's enshitification because instead of simply fixing their crappy SEO laden results, they're pushing this new thing.

I'm also willing to bet that once it's out of beta there will be either a limit on free searches or it'll just be straight up subscription model.

And just like that, normal search is dead, and the only viable option is to pay for their new thing

[-] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 1 year ago

Right now, they're offering the ai chat as a separate product, with separate terms of service and a privacy policy you have to manually agree to use. I hope they don't mess with the standard search function.

[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

I still use DDG (for search, none of the other bs they’ve been adding) because they are definitely better than Google or Bing. Is there a better alternative?

[-] seathru@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

For searches, Kagi.

Edit: I guess Kagi sucks. But I still prefer their search results over DDG.

[-] RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago
[-] ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 year ago

Funny how the bare HTML makes this feel weirdly personal. Maybe I should get around to making the shitty personal website I always wanted to make fifteen years ago.

[-] neblem@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

You really should. https://indieweb.org has a lot of resources.

[-] ace_garp@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Currently using and testing SearXNG

https://github.com/searxng/searxng

--//--

The list of public instances to connect to and use is here

https://searx.space/

[-] DdCno1@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Startpage is pretty good.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 year ago

wasn't it bought by an advertising company?

[-] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Considering DDG's privacy claims cannot be independently verified (and their MS tracking fiasco 2 years ago) they should be treated with the same level of caution that Startpage gets.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

but the difference between DDG and startpage is that DDG allows connections through Tor and VPN, while startpage doesn't. isn't it suspicious ?

[-] FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

I used to use startpage but just recently switched back to ddg. for some reason on my browser the search would return errors or sometimes I'd type my search query and it would just load the homepage of the site. Sometimes it just feels like there is no winning. :/

[-] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 1 points 1 year ago
[-] RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

Shares your IP and search query (according to them separately) with Microsoft.

[-] Meansalladknifehands@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

So does DDG

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 27 points 1 year ago

The good: usability. Bot answers are easy to access but still very distinct from the actual websearch. And if you don't like bot shit, it's easy to ignore. (I found some use case for it, but I get that plenty people dislike this.)

The bad: as others mentioned, even if you trust DDG, you have no reason to trust Microsoft's vassal OpenAI and its warring feud equally infested by tech bros Anthropic.

The ugly: the financial motivations behind the move are unclear. What is DDG trying to get from that? What is its business strategy?

[-] snownyte@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago

First people thought Firefox was the beacon of privacy, but they're leaning on AI.

Now DDG is doing it?

What timeline are we in?

[-] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 20 points 1 year ago

Can you explain what you understand the implications of AI for privacy to be?

[-] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

All of Firefox's ai initiatives including translation and chat are completely local. They have no impact on privacy.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Whoa, awesome. I just tried it and copilot, which I did like, has been supplanted.

I'm getting way more accurate answers.

[-] Rolando@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I tried out ddg's ai with anthropic's claude, and there was no character limit to inputs and no login required. With bing, it had a strict character limit, and required that I create an account and login.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

I can't see a huge difference between openai 3.5 and Claude on ddg, but they are both beating copilot hands down.

If I ask copilot a specific question, like when was the first year this product was released in the United States, it'll describe the product stuff tell me about the product without mentioning the year, while the ddg chatbots both answer a similar question immediately and accurately.

My only problem is that unless I'm missing something, ddg botsdon't provide the source they're getting the information from, which I do like a lot with copilot, that I can make sure the source they're pulling the information from is accurate immediately because the link is provided.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure the bots on DDG don't have internet access, just try asking a question about anything that happened very recently (e.g. last week) and they won't be able to answer.

[-] astropenguin5@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Chatgpt never did tho, they always have had a set time that their training data ended

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

you do realise gpt 3.5 turbo is still just chatgpt right ?

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

this was the perfect opportunity to integrate it with search like bard and ms copilot... but no, they will just offer them just like that, with hallucinations and all. claude 1.2 instant and gpt 3.5 turbo are not even that good

[-] wewbull@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

Yes. They should pass on all the things you've doing to the data harvesting overlords. Why the hell wouldn't they?

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago

but they claim to not to save the chat and that it won't be used for training

[-] BetaDoggo_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The issue is that they have no way of verifying that. We'd have to trust 2 other companies in addition to DDG.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

they could've made it optional, then if someone wanted to, they could opt in. there are also open source models like llama and mistral which they can run on their own hardware. but that would probably be too expensive for DDG

[-] antler@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Been helped a lot by Brave Search's built in AI. Privacy search engines have always been somewhat more unreliable, and with Google searches going to crap now, sometimes that AI answer below the search answers my question or points me in the right direction when non of the results do. If AI's going to pollution the search results might as well use it to alleviate the mess it made.

Still would a loved to see DDG go the brave model and actually self host an open model instead of just embedding ChatGPT.

Edit: nevermind, see they offer both self hosted and ChatGPT3.

[-] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

DDG secretly introduced a new subscription model. The AI chat could become a paid service in the near future. No way they can sustain giving it for free. https://lemmy.world/post/14554103

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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