this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Privacy

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DuckDuckGo now has an AI prompt available in beta, and I can already see it on my devices. Does it affect privacy? If so, what alternatives do we have? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Should I be worried about this development?

So far, I've tried Stract and 4get, and I'm not impressed with how limited they are - they're not accurate, and no image and video search is what turns me away from them.

Metasearch engines like SearXNG aren't that impressive, their results have too many filler results. My experience with manually tweaking their search also did not go well. Any alternatives with good defaults?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

AI doesn't automatically equal not private. Its probably still has private as it was before.

Now if it starts showing it knows things about you, then I'll be concerned.

[–] CaptainSpaceman 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It may not be that simple though.

Chatgpt is licensing their product to lots of entities and then the licensees relabel the AI as their own with a line somewhere that says "powered by Chatgpt" or similar.

For example, Bing AI is just chatgpt-4.

So if DDG is simply licensing out chatgpt, id definitely have eprivacy concerns.

[–] SlippiHUD 1 points 5 months ago

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/try-duckduckgos-new-ai-feature-duckassist-now-for-free/

Article about DuckAssist. It is powered by an OpenAI product. It doesn't do enough to bother me, and I can easily ignore it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you click the Chat button on a DDG search page, it says:

DuckDuckGo AI Chat is a private AI-powered chat service that currently supports OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and Anthropic’s Claude chat models.

So at minimum they are sharing data with one additional third party, either OpenAI or Anthropic depending on which model you choose.

OpenAI and Anthropic have similar terms and conditions for enterprise customers. They are not completely transparent and any given enterprise could have their own custom license terms, but my understanding is that they generally will not store queries or use them for training purposes. You'd better seek clarification from DDG. I was not able to find information on this in DDG's privacy policy.

Obviously, this is not legal advice, and I do not speak for any of these companies. This is just my understanding based on the last time I looked over the OpenAI and Anthropic privacy policies, which was a few months ago.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

A slightly more verbose policy specifically for the AI stuff is at https://duckduckgo.com/aichat/privacy-terms

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks! I didn't see that. Relevant bit for convenience:

we call model providers on your behalf so your personal information (for example, IP address) is not exposed to them. In addition, we have agreements in place with all model providers that further limit how they can use data from these anonymous requests that includes not using Prompts and Outputs to develop or improve their models as well as deleting all information received within 30 days.

Pretty standard stuff for such services in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I don't know how they could be much better. Obviously since they don't host the model, they're doing like SearxNG and passing along data for you, but all they can do is remind you not to mention anything personally identifying.

Edit: well it tried.