DuckDuckGo's ‘no-AI’ search feature gains more traction, expands to new regions

With this No-AI extension, users can search for information without any anxiety that any of his/her search history is being monitored or not on DuckDuckGo.

While Google, Microsoft and other big tech majors are incorporating more and more applications with generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) tools to improve the user experience, DuckDuckGo is doing the opposite.

The popular privacy-centric search engine company has introduced a 'No AI' search extension to the browser application.

With this, users can search for information without any anxiety that any of his/her search history is being monitored or not.

Unlike others, DuckDuckGo swears that it doesn't share the IP address or any personally identifiable details, including location of the user, with any ad service providers.

To use its browser, the user need not have to open an official online account or have to link their email ID.

Also, most importantly, DuckDuckGo will never use confidential details of the queries typed by the user to train its AI models.

DuckDuckGo's No AI Search was first launched in the US and select markets in May, and since then, it has grown in popularity. It registered more than a 3X surge in installs. In the US alone, the installs were also up 18.1 per cent week-over-week, with iOS app installs peaking at 69.9 per cent week-over-week growth, reported TechCrunch.

For now, DuckDuckGo is offering this 'No AI' search extension on Chrome and Firefox. It will soon expand it to Edge and other browsers in the coming weeks.

It should be noted that DuckDuckGo is not anti-AI; the company does offer an AI assistant with third-party AI bot integration in addition to its own AI mode.

It supports ChatGPT, Claude AI and other popular AI bots, but promises that the interaction between the user and the former is strictly protected and will never be used to train any AI model as such.

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