Post #161039
2026-01-28 05:46 UTC
Replies (40)
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@58008@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 09:30
At least they have an AI-free option, as annoying as it is to have to opt into it. On a related note, it's hilarious to me that the Ecosia search engine has AI built in. Like, I don't think planting *any* number of trees is going to offset the damage AI has done and will do to the planet. 
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@setsubyou@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 05:59
The article already notes that > privacy-focused users who don’t want “AI” in their search are more likely to use DuckDuckGo But the opposite is also true. Maybe it’s not 90% to 10% elsewhere, but I’d expect the same general imbalance because some people who would answer yes to ai in a survey on a search web site don’t go to search web sites in the first place. They go to ChatGPT or whatever.
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@MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2026-01-28 09:56
So you make noai the default, yes?
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@Deestan@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 09:30
Meanwhile, at HQ: "The userbase hallucinated that they don't want AI. Maybe we prompted them wrong?"
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@Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 08:19
And yet it's opt out, not opt in.
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@letsgo2themall@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 13:08
I made https://lite.duckduckgo.com/ my homepage. No AI and super fast loading. AI would be fine if it was opt-in. Shoving it into everything to see what works just makes people hate it. Looking at you MS.
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@sturmblast@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 12:14
THE AI by default marketing is failing? Shocker
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@dantheclamman@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 19:02
I think LLMs are fine for specific uses. A useful technology for brainstorming, debugging code, generic code examples, etc. People are just weary of oligarchs mandating how we use technology. We want to be customers but they want to instead shape how we work, as if we are livestock
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@Young_Gilgamesh@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 15:33
Google became crap ever since they added AI. Microsoft became crap ever since they added AI. OpenAI started losing money the moment they started working on AI. Coincidence? I think not! Rational people don't want Abominable Intelligence anywhere near them. Personally, I don't mind the AI overviews, but they shouldn't show up every time you do a search. That's just a waste of energy.
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@radio@sh.itjust.works 2026-01-28 08:24
And how much of their budget are they blowing on AI features despite polls showing their regular users don't even want it? Probably also 90%.
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@MutantTailThing@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 06:31
AI? FuckFuckNo
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@thegoodyinthehoody@sh.itjust.works 2026-01-29 17:49
As much as I agree with this poll, duck duck go is a very self selecting audience. The number doesn’t actually mean much statistically. If the general public knew that “AI” is much closer to predictive text than intelligence they might be more wary of it
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@roserose56@lemmy.zip 2026-01-28 11:45
Couple months ago, I learned that duckduckgo has settings about disabling AI content. Settings>AI features.\ Easy as that.
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@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 15:25
It's so funny to see this pushed out as a marketing campaign for DuckDuckGo AI and it totally flopped.
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@Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-01-29 05:49
I would like to petition to rename AI to Simulated Human Intelligence Technology
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@FirmDistribution@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 12:42
omfg you don't say
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@mechoman444@lemmy.world 2026-01-29 01:27
Okay, so that’s not what the article says. It says that 90% of respondents don’t want AI search. Moreover, the article goes into detail about how DuckDuckGo is still going to implement AI anyway. Seriously, titles in subs like this need better moderation. The title was clearly engineered to generate clicks and drive engagement. That is not how journalism should function.
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@WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 2026-01-28 06:17
That's when the Silicon Valley types all bring out the ol' "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." Well, they already showed what LLM can do and it's not that great.
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@FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 2026-01-29 02:19
I guess they haven’t asked me or it’d be 91%
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@A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 2026-01-28 06:36
It's funny how many people ruffle their feathers over this. Same type of comments as when somebody first shared this poll here: you can't expect this to be representative, it's not a yes/no question etc. Let's put it like this: I do not want AI pushed on me in almost every online situation. That **is** a yes/no question to me. Why? Because it's not ready, wastes the planet, and is the USA's big gamble.
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@Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-01-28 14:58
Is there a way to get Firefox/Librewolf to have noai.duckduckgo.com set as the default search engine in settings? I can't find a way to set a custom link for something like that.
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@echodot@feddit.uk 2026-01-28 22:55
I would have no problem with AI if it could be useful. The problem is no matter how many times I'm promised otherwise it cannot automate my job and talk to the idiots for me. It just hallucinates a random gibberish which is obviously unhealthful.
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@yonderbarn@lazysoci.al 2026-01-28 08:48
I have yet to use chatgpt.
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@0x0@lemmy.zip 2026-01-28 11:40
Said [poll](https://voteyesornoai.com/).
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@elbiter@lemmy.world 2026-01-29 13:35
The other 10% are bots
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@SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 17:45
Customer service was sparse before, now it is nonexistent.
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@Suavevillain@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 21:58
AI is not impressive or worth all the trade offs and worse quality of life. It is decent in some areas but mostly grifter tech.
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@HalfSalesman@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 18:26
While no doubt it may be that most users of DuckDuckGo are anti-AI given the nature of the service and who it attracts, the 90% metric makes me believe that the people who ambivalently use DuckDuckGo's AI (and are not pro or anti) did not vote in this at all and may find themselves using DuckDuckGo less if they see the surface-level convenience randomly disappear from the service. So I assume they'll get rid of the AI and they'll see a drop in users overtime as a percentage of minimum effort types get confused or annoyed. And then they'll bring it back as they see a drop in users, annoy the users that hate AI and they'll leave as well. And neither group will end up ever returning. This whole poll was a terrible idea.
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@kaotic@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 22:12
Don't build AI into everything and assume you know how your users want to use it. If they do want to use AI, give me an MCP server to interact with your service instead and let users build out their own tooling.
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@Electricd@lemmybefree.net 2026-01-29 13:24
Most objective article (sarcasm) > In fact it has a whole-ass “AI” chatbot product, Duck.ai, which is bundled in with DuckDuckGo’s privacy VPN for $10 a month
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@98vesselsreptile@lemmy.zip 2026-01-29 23:26
As a DuckDuckGo user who uses claude and ChatGPT every day, I don’t want AI features in duck duck go because I probably would never use them. So many companies are adding chatbot features and most of them can’t compete with the big names. Why would I use a bunch of worse LLMs and learn a bunch of new interfaces when I can just use the ones I’m already comfortable with
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@Knightfox@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 22:51
On DuckDuckGo that is unsurprising
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@GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 2026-01-28 17:57
There’s noai.duckduckgo.com and lite.duckduckgo.com to help you use DDG without this ai stuff and without having to fiddle with settings. Especially helpful if you frequently open private tabs and then the settings get cleared on normal DDG.
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@Stefan_S_from_H@piefed.zip 2026-01-28 10:04
Even without AI, you can’t find Neocities sites there because DuckDuckGo relies on Bing.
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@Reygle@lemmy.world 2026-01-30 03:58
Even that I would consider wildly unjust. User data would HAVE to be opt IN.
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@Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2026-01-29 00:07
A massive underestimation
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@Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 2026-01-29 18:17
I think most people find something like chatgpt and copilot useful in their day to day lives. LLMs are a very helpful and powerful technology. However, most people are against these models collecting every piece of data imaginable from you. People are against the tech, they're against the people running the tech. I don't think most people would mind if a FOSS LLM, that's designed with privacy and complete user control over their data, was integrated with an option to completely opt out. I think that's the only way to get people to trust this tech again and be onboard.
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@m3t00@lemmy.world 2026-01-28 20:01
that was why i started using ddg
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@TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 2026-01-28 08:24
and 45% of those respondents were A.I.
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@probable_possum@leminal.space 2026-01-28 12:33
90%? Could be selection bias. I think, the result would be a different one if users would have been asked to in the Google AI tab. You need to fetch users from different places for your sample to get more meaningful results.