DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, has joined Microsoft and Google in launching an AI-powered summarisation feature. The feature, called DuckAssist, uses natural language technology from OpenAI and Anthropic, combined with active indexing of reference sites, such as Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannia, to source answers to straightforward search queries. At present, the majority of the sources are drawn from Wikipedia, but the company is “experimenting with how incorporating other sources could work and when to use them”, according to founder Gabe Weinberg. The new feature is currently only available on the company’s apps and browser extensions, but will be rolled out to all search users in the coming weeks.
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Weinberg said that the AI models currently used to power the natural language summarisation are The Davinci model from OpenAI and the Claude model from Anthropic. DDG is also experimenting with the new Turbo model that OpenAI recently announced. The addition of generative AI to the mix has enabled the search engine to expand how many queries can be directly answered through its Instant Answers feature. The company dubbed the addition of generative AI into the mix as a “fully integrated Instant Answer”.
DuckAssist is free to use and does not require the user to be logged in to access it. It is currently only available in English. While DuckDuckGo’s search engine already has an Instant Answers feature, adding generative AI summarisation has enabled it to directly answer more queries. It is not yet clear whether DDG will seek to adapt sourcing to the context of the query or seek partnerships with reference sites.
