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submitted 6 months ago by MoreCoffee@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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DDG is now offering free/private AI chat using several models.

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[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 82 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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

[-] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 70 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[-] shotgun_crab@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago

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

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[-] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

They delete the chats but the metadata is forever

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

They state that they obsficate the metadata of chats sent to OpenAI

[-] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Doubt

Open source is the onlybway to know and DDG still hides a lot of their code

[-] TAG@lemmy.world 23 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

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

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[-] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 18 points 6 months ago

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

[-] foggy@lemmy.world 17 points 6 months ago

Here's the thing: they can't.

[-] TriLinder@lemmy.zip 51 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Its initial prompt:

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 27 points 6 months 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?

[-] moon@lemmy.cafe 10 points 6 months ago

Private, yet uses closed source shitty models.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 months ago

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

I'm getting way more accurate answers.

[-] Rolando@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] Varyk@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] astropenguin5@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Chatgpt never did tho, they always have had a set time that their training data ended

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago

you do realise gpt 3.5 turbo is still just chatgpt right ?

[-] A_A@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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

[-] Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 months ago

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

[-] Kraiden@kbin.run 5 points 6 months ago

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

[-] nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br 30 points 6 months ago

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

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[-] kinsnik@lemmy.world 20 points 6 months ago

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?

[-] ace_garp@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months 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/

[-] DdCno1@kbin.social 1 points 6 months ago

Startpage is pretty good.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 6 months ago

wasn't it bought by an advertising company?

[-] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

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.

[-] ShadowCat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

but the difference between DDG and startpage is that DDG allows connections through Tor and VPN, while startpage doesn't. isn't it suspicious ?

[-] FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months 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. :/

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[-] nytrixus@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months 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?

[-] exanime@lemmy.today 3 points 6 months ago

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

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months 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.

[-] antler@feddit.rocks 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Been helped a lot by Brave Search's built in AI. Privacy search engines have always been somewhat more unreliable, and with Google searches going to crap now, sometimes that AI answer below the search answers my question or points me in the right direction when non of the results do. If AI's going to pollution the search results might as well use it to alleviate the mess it made.

Still would a loved to see DDG go the brave model and actually self host an open model instead of just embedding ChatGPT.

Edit: nevermind, see they offer both self hosted and ChatGPT3.

[-] cmgvd3lw@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

DDG secretly introduced a new subscription model. The AI chat could become a paid service in the near future. No way they can sustain giving it for free. https://lemmy.world/post/14554103

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this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024

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