DuckDuckGo has created DuckAssist: an artificial intelligence assistant that navigates the Internet for you and collects the most important information for your research.
Generative AI is a big evolution at the moment. After Microsoft’s Bing, DuckDuckGo is the next internet service to experiment with AI-powered search results. On his blog, DuckDuckGo announces DuckAssist and immediately makes the search function available in all versions of the browser.
However, the way DuckAssist works is completely different from, for example, Bing Chat. Rather, this tool is an aggregator that looks up the best sources of information based on your query and summarizes them for you. As such, there are no chat features, and you can’t have an intimate (or very weird) conversation with DuckDuckGo’s AI assistant.
Summary from Wikipedia
The tool is now available in beta for all DuckDuckGo users. No waiting list, no obligation to make DuckDuckGo your default browser, just open your browser and search. The term “beta” implies limitations.
So DuckAssist won’t show up in all searches. Only searches for factual information will be displayed. At this point, “over 99%” of the information still comes from Wikipedia, meaning that DuckAssist only summarizes relevant Wikipedia pages for you.
DuckDuckGo
Gabriel Weinberg told TechCrunch that for now, DuckAssist relies almost entirely on information from Wikipedia to make it as reliable as possible. It is not yet possible to guarantee this 100%, he clarifies. In the future, DuckDuckGo plans to link new sources to DuckAssist. Weinberg adds that DuckAssist is the first of many AI features to be integrated into the browser.
What happened to Google?
The pressure on Google will increase further as DuckDuckGo is also experimenting with AI-generated search results. Google is seeing more and more competitors adding AI capabilities, and the tech giant is currently lagging behind a bit. The answer lies in Bard, but a clumsy throw robbed him of momentum. It is likely that Google will present important news in the field of artificial intelligence at the I/O 2023 conference in May.