Somewhat ironic given that DuckDuckGo has AI on by default. You have to either save the settings on the cloud or manually turn off AI when searching using DuckDuckGo. Still a good privacy search engine though.
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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I wouldn't call it private as from my experience it uses browser fingerprinting to target users.
Wait, it has a quick blurb on by default but actually interacting with it requires an opt in. That seems like a good balance.
In fact doing a search now (duck is my default) it doesn't even offer an ai answer unless I click it first.
Ironically, I left DuckDuckGo and switched to Kagi when DDG announced their AI.
Doesn't Kagi use AI as well now though?
Yep, the Kagi Assistant. I think you can turn it off but like DDG it's on by default.
Performative.
But what about all the AI slop in the web results?
It does also have the option to filter AI generated images from search results.
I don't actually do all that many image searches. I'm usually searching for text based pages, and those results have also gotten super terrible, but this doesn't seem to have any impact on that.
No idea if it's how I have things saved but DDG is just enough AI for me. If I want AI to answer a stupid question without making me bother with shitty SEO spam, great! If I want to find a site, I can! Not costing me anything near as I can tell.
I'm happy enough with DDG. Your use-case will vary.
Their AI is only useful because the quality of search results has gotten so bad.
"Let's mitigate AI hate by putting in more AI!"
The AI is actually fairly useful and can be disabled.
It used to be when you searched for something, it was information first, products second. If you searched bicycle, it would give you the Wikipedia page for bicycle, and then pages related to bicycles, some of which would be retailers. Now it's the other way around, if the informational pages even show up at all.
Forget all the AI bullshit, this is my biggest gripe with search engines today. This is why people use ChatGPT - for all its faults - to search shit that Google used to answer. ChatGPT will confidently lie to you, but it least it gives you an answer instead of trying to sell something to you.
I have to add "Wikipedia" or "stack overflow" or "reddit" to most searches