DuckDuckGo Releases Its Own ChatGPT-Powered Search Engine, DuckAssist (and it sounds good)

[highplainsdem]

https://gizmodo.com/chat-gpt-ai-duckduckgo-duckassist-search-engine-1850199552

DuckDuckGo launched a beta version of an AI search tool powered by ChatGPT Wednesday called DuckAssist. The addition to the company’s privacy-focused search engine uses ChatGPT’s language parsing capability to generate answers scraped from Wikipedia and related sources like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The tool is free and available on the DuckDuckGo web browsing apps for phones and computers as well as the company’s browser extension starting today.

“DuckAssist is a new type of Instant Answer in our search results, just like News, Maps, Weather, and many others we already have,” said Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo, in a blog post. “We designed DuckAssist to be fully integrated into DuckDuckGo Private Search, mirroring the look and feel of our traditional search results, so while the AI-generated content is new, we hope using DuckAssist feels second nature.”

Unlike Microsoft’s bungled AI projects with Bing (RIP Sydney), DuckAssist isn’t a chatbot. Instead, DuckAssist will suggest an automatic answer when it recognizes a search term it can answer. It’s not being forced on anyone. When an AI-powered response is available, you’ll see a magic wand icon with an “ask me” button in your search results. The company says DuckAssist is still in beta, so it may not pop up that often yet.

-snip-

The company says limiting the data source to Wikipedia will help stave off some of the bizarre misbehavior users have seen on other AI tools. For example, Microsoft had to limit the features of its new Bing Chat, which is also powered by ChatGPT, just over a week after its release. After reports showed Bing gave away its secret internal code name, used racial slurs, and gave out a long list of generally unhinged responses, Microsoft lobotomized the Bing AI and clawed back its functionality.

-snip-

Link to and excerpt from that blog post: https://spreadprivacy.com/duckassist-launch/

Today, we’re giving all users of DuckDuckGo’s browsing apps and browser extensions the first public look at DuckAssist, a new beta Instant Answer in our search results. If you enter a question that can be answered by Wikipedia into our search box, DuckAssist may appear and use AI natural language technology to anonymously generate a brief, sourced summary of what it finds in Wikipedia — right above our regular private search results. It’s completely free and private itself, with no sign-up required, and it’s available right now.

-snip-

DuckAssist answers questions by scanning a specific set of sources — for now that’s usually Wikipedia, and occasionally related sites like Britannica — using DuckDuckGo’s active indexing. Because we’re using natural language technology from OpenAI and Anthropic to summarize what we find in Wikipedia, these answers should be more directly responsive to your actual question than traditional search results or other Instant Answers.

For this initial trial, DuckAssist is most likely to appear in our search results when users search for questions that have straightforward answers in Wikipedia. Think questions like “what is a search engine index?” rather than more subjective questions like “what is the best search engine?”. We are using the most recent full Wikipedia download available, which is at most a few weeks old. This means DuckAssist will not appear for questions more recent than that, at least for the time being. For those questions, our existing search results page does a better job of surfacing helpful information.

-snip-

Generative AI technology is designed to generate text in response to any prompt, regardless of whether it “knows” the answer or not. However, by asking DuckAssist to only summarize information from Wikipedia and related sources, the probability that it will “hallucinate” — that is, just make something up — is greatly diminished. In all cases though, a source link, usually a Wikipedia article, will be linked below the summary, often pointing you to a specific section within that article so you can learn more.

-snip-

They admit DuckAssist will still make mistakes, and they would like users encountering any to report them anonymously via the link they'll provide.

This is the MOST INTELLIGENT use of AI for search that I've read about yet, BECAUSE it's limited to fairly credible sources.

Kudos to DuckDuckGo. Which I don't normally use - I like Google (much better than Bing, too, which DuckDuckGo's search results are based on).

But I might try DuckDuckGo more often to check this.

It won't replace Google for me since I like more info, and I can skim sources very quickly. Wikipedia gets things wrong at times, too, though it can be a useful starting point, and it covers a lot of obscure topics.

But for quick answers on fairly simple topics, this is a good use of AI.

[SheltieLover]

1. Kicking for Visibility

[highplainsdem]

2. Thank you!