DuckDuckGo has launched its new AI Chat service, enabling users to engage with popular chatbots such as GPT-3.5 and Claude 3 Haiku anonymously. This service prevents the sharing of personal information and ensures that conversations are not used to train AI models.
How AI Chat Works
- Model Selection: Users can choose from several chat models, including Meta’s Llama 3 70B model, Mixtral 8x7B, GPT-3.5, and Claude.
- Anonymity: DuckDuckGo acts as an intermediary, substituting the user’s IP address with one of their own, thus anonymizing the request.
- Metadata Stripping: All user query metadata is stripped, so while underlying model providers may store chats temporarily, they cannot personally identify users.
- Data Privacy Agreements: DuckDuckGo has agreements with AI companies to prevent them from using chat prompts and outputs for model training and to delete any saved data within 30 days.
DuckDuckGo Data Privacy Features
- Anonymized Interaction: By acting as an intermediary, DuckDuckGo ensures that user interactions are anonymized, preventing AI providers from tracing queries back to individual users.
- Data Handling: Metadata is removed from queries, and data privacy agreements ensure that AI companies do not use interactions to train their models and must delete stored data within 30 days.
- User Comfort: Addressing concerns from a Pew Research study, DuckDuckGo’s service alleviates fears of personal data misuse by companies.
Access and Usage
- Availability: AI Chat can be accessed at duck.ai and duckduckgo.com/chat.
- Free Use: The service is free within a daily limit, with a potential for a paid option offering higher usage limits and access to more advanced models.
- Additional Services: AI Chat follows the release of DuckAssist, which provides anonymized, AI-generated synopses of search results similar to Google’s SGE.
Implications
DuckDuckGo’s AI Chat service addresses growing privacy concerns by ensuring anonymous interaction with AI models and preventing data from being used for training purposes. This service is a significant step towards providing secure and private AI interactions, appealing to users wary of their personal information being exploited.
