DuckDuckGo's latest product is a pair of ordinary sunglasses, with no added features such as video recording or generative AI integration. Part marketing campaign and part wearable...
AI is the future of search and I dont see anyway that changes. The user experience of AI search is way to good, average users love the summary at the top of their search. Almost every report i’ve seen shows over 50% of people using AI for search and that tracks with what I see in people i know in real life.
I’m a DDG user and I do not want them to handicap themselves to pass a purity test.
Almost every report i’ve seen shows over 50% of people using AI for search
Because people don’t know that they can turn it off, or they don’t know how to turn it off and it doesn’t bother them enough to find out how. If it was opt-in, that statistic would probably be 5% use AI for search.
This stat is people who use llm chatbots for search. It excludes summaries. I think that had 60% saying they did read the summaries 10% saying not sure and rest saying they didnt.
Its wrong though. Its wrong so fucking often. There’s no way to fix that. I stopped using ddg because of this. Pandering to right wing idiots does not necessarily mean being smart, that’s thatcherite Nazi coddling lies.
I checked again to get a more up to date report and so that we actually have something to go off instead of my memory of some random reports. Pew finds 50% of people use chatbots and the most common use is searching for information. Also in the report the have a stat for reading AI summaries at the top of a search and that is 60% say that have, 10% dont know and 30% dont read it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/
So its fair to say I was wrong and its not over 50% but its close to 50%.
Its a generalized product targeting average people. Average people dont care AI/No AI they want the results and they use the AI summaries. If DDG hid it then they would just think it doesnt exist and go use google which provides them faster more convenient results.
We’re talking about the same duckduckgo that had a huge poll about this right? The only data point that exists regarding what people want is that of the 175,354 users who took the poll, only 10% wanted AI features.
DuckDuckGo has taken a clear stance on generative AI and other LLM-based tools, having asked users whether they wanted AI results fully integrated into search. An overwhelming majority said no, which is why the company now keeps AI content and interactions confined to a separate page.
DuckDuckGo should apply this lesson to their search engine!
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
I maintain that this should be the default behavior and the AI be opt-in
AI is the future of search and I dont see anyway that changes. The user experience of AI search is way to good, average users love the summary at the top of their search. Almost every report i’ve seen shows over 50% of people using AI for search and that tracks with what I see in people i know in real life.
I’m a DDG user and I do not want them to handicap themselves to pass a purity test.
Because people don’t know that they can turn it off, or they don’t know how to turn it off and it doesn’t bother them enough to find out how. If it was opt-in, that statistic would probably be 5% use AI for search.
This stat is people who use llm chatbots for search. It excludes summaries. I think that had 60% saying they did read the summaries 10% saying not sure and rest saying they didnt.
Its wrong though. Its wrong so fucking often. There’s no way to fix that. I stopped using ddg because of this. Pandering to right wing idiots does not necessarily mean being smart, that’s thatcherite Nazi coddling lies.
Ignoring the schizo half of your question, what would be an acceptable error rate for you?
The acceptable inaccurate result rate is 0%. I think that’s unachievable by LLM tech.
No search will ever give you the correct answer 100% of the time so I dont know why you’d draw such a dumb line in the sand.
I mean unless you dont use search engines, don’t use libraries, don’t talk to humans.
Because it’s not possible to search without there being an AI summary
No these are not reports that count someone viewing an AI summary on google as using AI for search.
then how do they count it? home else could someone be counting “AI usage in the search engine”?
I checked again to get a more up to date report and so that we actually have something to go off instead of my memory of some random reports. Pew finds 50% of people use chatbots and the most common use is searching for information. Also in the report the have a stat for reading AI summaries at the top of a search and that is 60% say that have, 10% dont know and 30% dont read it. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/
So its fair to say I was wrong and its not over 50% but its close to 50%.
Then these people aren’t using DDG anyway, so why should DDG be trying to appeal to them?
Then opt in. We shouldn’t have to opt out to avoid padding the AI numbers.
Its a generalized product targeting average people. Average people dont care AI/No AI they want the results and they use the AI summaries. If DDG hid it then they would just think it doesnt exist and go use google which provides them faster more convenient results.
We’re talking about the same duckduckgo that had a huge poll about this right? The only data point that exists regarding what people want is that of the 175,354 users who took the poll, only 10% wanted AI features.
Yes we are talking about ddg which has roughly 100 million users and put out a poll to which 175k said they didnt want AI.
You’re assuming that everyone who didn’t answer the poll is for AI, not exactly a good assumption considering the poll results.
This is what I get when I run a DuckDuckGo search in a private window. Sure doesn’t look separate to me.
Click “show never” or “on demand”
which is far from
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
they are definitely not confining AI functions to that page.
Given the url, it would seem to be quite the opposite.
yes that’s what I meant. what was your point?
mine is that despite claiming AI functionality is confined to a separate page, it is enabled by default on their main search site