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.
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.
You’re constantly arguing that the sample is so strongly skewed against your position that the proportion of people who want AI is over 4 times (!) as much as in the sample. “Everyone” is an exaggeration, but the point remains. If you believe the sample is that skewed, then you have to provide evidence.
Thats not what I’m arguing. I’m saying most people dont care enough either way and based off research and polling ive seen that most people do use the features. So if most people use them and only a tiny fraction wants them gone you should keep them default and give those people a toggle.
When I’m saying 175k out of 100m I’m pointing out that its a tiny % of the user base. The people who were engaged enough to vote in that poll were the anti AI people. It was posted to all the anti AI subreddits and twitter feeds. It was a big call to action to try and prove no one wants it.
Its obviously where search is heading which is why ddg mentions in their blogs that they are working heavily on AI features. They have always been receptive to users so unlike google so they do give users the option to disable. If they had data that most were disabling we’d see that be the default.
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.
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 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?
How do you know? Im sure 1% do
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.
Im not making that assumption at all.
You’re constantly arguing that the sample is so strongly skewed against your position that the proportion of people who want AI is over 4 times (!) as much as in the sample. “Everyone” is an exaggeration, but the point remains. If you believe the sample is that skewed, then you have to provide evidence.
Thats not what I’m arguing. I’m saying most people dont care enough either way and based off research and polling ive seen that most people do use the features. So if most people use them and only a tiny fraction wants them gone you should keep them default and give those people a toggle.
When I’m saying 175k out of 100m I’m pointing out that its a tiny % of the user base. The people who were engaged enough to vote in that poll were the anti AI people. It was posted to all the anti AI subreddits and twitter feeds. It was a big call to action to try and prove no one wants it.
Its obviously where search is heading which is why ddg mentions in their blogs that they are working heavily on AI features. They have always been receptive to users so unlike google so they do give users the option to disable. If they had data that most were disabling we’d see that be the default.
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.