After Bing, Microsoft's web search engine whose preview version integrates features based on artificial intelligence, a less famous competitor, DuckDuckGo, also presented its AI-enhanced platform version.
The engine of the same name, which promises to offer users safe and privacy-oriented browsing, has unveiled 'DuckAssist'.
This is a function created in collaboration with OpenAI, developer of ChatGpt, and Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup in which Google has invested.
The result is not a real chatbot, like on Bing, but a tool that will extract information from Wikipedia to provide a natural language response to user questions.
After a surfer has typed in his question, a wand icon indicates that an answer provided by ChatGpt is available for that question.
The text provides a summary collected from Wikipedia and compiled in natural language, as if it were a chat message, similar to the experience provided by Microsoft's 'new' Bing AI.
The novelty is already available both on the DuckDuck app for smartphones and on PCs, as well as on the browser via plugin, i.e. a small button to be added to the top icons of navigation programs, to quickly access the engine's search page.
As the company explains from its official blog: "For this initial trial, it is very likely that DuckAssist will appear in search results when users are looking for questions with simple answers in Wikipedia rather than more subjective questions".
In a note, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg added: "DuckAssist is a new type of instant response in our search results, just like News, Maps, Weather and many others already in existence. We designed DuckAssist to be fully integrated into DuckDuckGo Private Search, mirroring the look and feel of our traditional search results."
