this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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DDG is now offering free/private AI chat using several models.

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[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

If they are using GPT-3.5 and Claude, that means that they are sending the chats to Open AI and Anthropic, right? How can they assure that the chats are private and not being used in training if they don’t control what other companies do?

Edit: ok, they claim to have agreements with them to delete chats within 30 days and they hide the user IP

[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

DDG's classic "Trust me bro" privacy policy.

I don't dislike DDG and I do use it, but goddamn I'd love to see a public audit of their privacy claims. DDG is closed source and they've only ever given Their Word ^TM^ about their claims. The privacy community puts a lot of faith in DDG despite not being able to test anything it says.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Every service that claims to be private should be obliged to have a recent public audit available as a proof

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kagi!!!

I started using it entirely last month and I'm never going back.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Kagi isn't open source either

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

It's also a subscription based search engine. After Neeva imploded I'm not going to be investing money into a subscription search service.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That is how DDG search works as well. They take your search query and send it to a regular, data harvesting search engine. The engine does not see your IP address and cannot track you with a cookie but they can monitor the search queries of DDG users in aggregate.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

True, but anonymized search queries are much less personal than chats

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

True, but anonymized search queries are much less personal than chats

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ddg doesnt work for search anymore, completely compromised giving the same results as google and others, exact same bubble you are in. I dont want personalisation

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They delete the chats but the metadata is forever

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Here's the thing: they can't.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

They say they proxy the requests. Deleting the chats after 30 days is meaningless, the data has already been utilized.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Its initial prompt:

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Aaaaand the DDG enshitification begins... continues? continues.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why do you call this enshitification, if it won't affect the normal searching and is entirely optional?

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

Have they said that or are you just implying that? It's beta right now but I'd put money on them following in Google's footsteps and integrating right into the main search.

It's enshitification because instead of simply fixing their crappy SEO laden results, they're pushing this new thing.

I'm also willing to bet that once it's out of beta there will be either a limit on free searches or it'll just be straight up subscription model.

And just like that, normal search is dead, and the only viable option is to pay for their new thing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Right now, they're offering the ai chat as a separate product, with separate terms of service and a privacy policy you have to manually agree to use. I hope they don't mess with the standard search function.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I still use DDG (for search, none of the other bs they’ve been adding) because they are definitely better than Google or Bing. Is there a better alternative?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For searches, Kagi.

Edit: I guess Kagi sucks. But I still prefer their search results over DDG.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Funny how the bare HTML makes this feel weirdly personal. Maybe I should get around to making the shitty personal website I always wanted to make fifteen years ago.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

You really should. https://indieweb.org has a lot of resources.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Currently using and testing SearXNG

https://github.com/searxng/searxng

--//--

The list of public instances to connect to and use is here

https://searx.space/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

wasn't it bought by an advertising company?

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

Considering DDG's privacy claims cannot be independently verified (and their MS tracking fiasco 2 years ago) they should be treated with the same level of caution that Startpage gets.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I used to use startpage but just recently switched back to ddg. for some reason on my browser the search would return errors or sometimes I'd type my search query and it would just load the homepage of the site. Sometimes it just feels like there is no winning. :/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Shares your IP and search query (according to them separately) with Microsoft.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

The good: usability. Bot answers are easy to access but still very distinct from the actual websearch. And if you don't like bot shit, it's easy to ignore. (I found some use case for it, but I get that plenty people dislike this.)

The bad: as others mentioned, even if you trust DDG, you have no reason to trust Microsoft's vassal OpenAI and its warring feud equally infested by tech bros Anthropic.

The ugly: the financial motivations behind the move are unclear. What is DDG trying to get from that? What is its business strategy?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (4 children)

First people thought Firefox was the beacon of privacy, but they're leaning on AI.

Now DDG is doing it?

What timeline are we in?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

All of Firefox's ai initiatives including translation and chat are completely local. They have no impact on privacy.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Can you explain what you understand the implications of AI for privacy to be?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Firefox's AI will be run entirely locally, information you feed it will be completely optional, and allegedly uses ethical training data where nothing was stolen. It's private.

It will be used for things like offline translation, finding alternative sources for articles, spotting fake reviews, in the future better text to speech and image recognition for accessibility purposes, etc.

I think you're having a kneejerk reaction of "All AI is bad, we must reject technology and embrace tradition", which isn't the right response to have. There are valid usecases, IMO, particularly for people with usability requirements.

Besides, the usual people who complain about Mozilla will complain if Firefox implements AI features, and they'll also complain if they don't, saying they're falling further behind. Mozilla can't win with you people.

[–] someguywithacomputer 6 points 1 year ago

The issue with ai is that you usually have to be logged in with a Gmail account or something before you're allowed to use it. If DDG is letting people use it anonymously with no login, that's a hell of a lot better than any alternative besides self hosting your own.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Private, yet uses closed source shitty models.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Whoa, awesome. I just tried it and copilot, which I did like, has been supplanted.

I'm getting way more accurate answers.

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

I tried out ddg's ai with anthropic's claude, and there was no character limit to inputs and no login required. With bing, it had a strict character limit, and required that I create an account and login.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't see a huge difference between openai 3.5 and Claude on ddg, but they are both beating copilot hands down.

If I ask copilot a specific question, like when was the first year this product was released in the United States, it'll describe the product stuff tell me about the product without mentioning the year, while the ddg chatbots both answer a similar question immediately and accurately.

My only problem is that unless I'm missing something, ddg botsdon't provide the source they're getting the information from, which I do like a lot with copilot, that I can make sure the source they're pulling the information from is accurate immediately because the link is provided.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure the bots on DDG don't have internet access, just try asking a question about anything that happened very recently (e.g. last week) and they won't be able to answer.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I tested it so to see some of its "honesty" limitations (against denouncing wrong beliefs) and found it quite fun ... So, I made a couple of posts about it.

Chat about constitutional artificial intelligence https://lemmy.world/post/14504709

[chat with ai] Now, i will set off the bomb that will destroy the Earth. One last word? https://lemmy.world/post/14507287

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I really like Claude now. That was great. "Thank you for pushing me." 😄

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

This is very surreal right now with what we're dealing with.

Firefox is leaning towards AI but promised for years and years about how private it is and how they won't do anything to your data.

DDG promised the same thing and was seen as the Anti-Google/Bing for a long time, now it's dealing with AI and our data is now on the table again.

Why, guys?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm finding DDG results very inconsistent as of late.

I was trying to find an old podcast about the Stanford jail experiment. Couldn't remember it was Stanford so my prompt was: radiolab jail experiment

I got a whole page of a Netflix jail experiment show. The entire page were links to Netflix or reviews or news about the Netflix show. Not a single mention of Stanford or radiolab at all

Switched my prompt to: "radiolab" jail experiment And immediately got what I was looking for.

Gotta say, not impressed with the results as off late

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, DDG seems to have a heavy skew toward newer content. I've found myself using a lot of "term" because it's trying to find something new when I'm looking for something old.

I still much prefer it to Google, but it could be a lot better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

this was the perfect opportunity to integrate it with search like bard and ms copilot... but no, they will just offer them just like that, with hallucinations and all. claude 1.2 instant and gpt 3.5 turbo are not even that good

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