For those who choose to use AI as part of their search workflow, the feature is rolling out for free with daily limits, with higher limits for DuckDuckGo subscribers. Here are the details.
An optional new feature is being rolled out for free users and subscribers
Last March, DuckDuckGo announced Duck.ai, its chatbot platform that offers a private way to search or chat with third-party LLMs from frontier AI labs such as OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, and Mistral.
As the year progressed, Duck.ai gained new features, such as the image generation we described here.
Today, the platform released another feature: voice mode. It follows the same privacy policy as the company’s other tools and features, meaning chats are anonymized by DuckDuckGo and are never used to train underlying artificial intelligence.
DuckDuckGo explains that OpenAI is the model provider for all voice chats, but that streaming audio “is not stored by DuckDuckGo or OpenAI (…) after the chat ends. The company also says that “OpenAI is contractually limited in how they can use voice chat data to what is necessary to perform their services.”
Here’s a little more, straight from DuckDuckGo:
When you start a voice chat, Duck.ai connects you to the OpenAI model through an encrypted transmission connection that we cannot decrypt. Your microphone audio is streamed to OpenAI in real time, where the model listens, transcribes what you say, and generates a spoken and text response.
Duck.ai voice chat is currently available in most browsers, except for Firefox, which has support “coming soon”. The company also says that while each user is subject to daily limits, subscribers have a higher cap than in the free version.
Due to the recent suppression of AI-based features, DuckDuckGo wants to make sure users understand that this, along with all other AI features that come out of its labs, is completely optional. And even for users who decide to use Duck.ai’s voice mode and later change their mind, they can disable it in Duck.ai’s settings.
To learn more about Duck.ai’s new real-time voice mode and to dig deeper into the company’s data handling policy for the feature, click this link.
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