Certain, when chatbots aren’t outright hallucinating, they are often useful instruments for gathering info, producing concepts, and finishing duties.
However a few of the greatest gamers within the AI chatbot house—together with OpenAI, Google, and Meta—aren’t precisely recognized for robust privateness protections. So you need to have quite a lot of blind religion that the information you give to their chatbots received’t be utilized in methods you won’t like, resembling constructing a profile round you and your immediate historical past for the needs of promoting or monitoring.
So, what’s an individual to do in the event that they don’t belief Massive Tech with their chatbot information? Quit AI chatbots fully? Fortunately, they don’t must.
I’ve been testing out a comparatively small participant within the AI chatbot marketplace for a couple of weeks now known as Duck.ai. It gives entry to a few of the strongest LLMs on the market whereas defending my privateness from them.
Now, I can’t think about myself ever going again to utilizing one of many behemoths immediately.
ChatGPT with out the privateness fears
DuckDuckGo is greatest recognized for its privacy-focused search engine. In contrast to Google, DuckDuckGo doesn’t monitor your search historical past or create a profile of your on-line exercise. This privacy-first strategy is one cause Apple, one other firm that values person privateness, allows people to set DuckDuckGo because the default search engine in its Safari browser—and it’s the primary cause many select DuckDuckGo, which was based in 2008, over Google.
Just a few years in the past, DuckDuckGo entered the AI chatbot market with the launch of Duck.ai. This chatbot differs from most main ones, resembling ChatGPT from OpenAI or Gemini from Google, in two key methods.
The primary is that Duck.ai doesn’t have its personal “DuckDuckGo” LLM. Whereas its interface is almost an identical to most chatbot interfaces—with a immediate field within the heart and a sidebar on the left exhibiting your chat historical past—Duck.ai contains a drop-down menu that allows you to select amongst numerous LLM fashions. You’ll be able to decide from six free fashions for every new immediate, with 5 further fashions accessible in case you subscribe to DuckDuckGo’s VPN service, which prices $9.99 per thirty days or $99 per 12 months.
In different phrases, Duck.ai is an LLM aggregator. You utilize a single interface, however with every new immediate you’ll be able to select a unique LLM to reply. Free choices embody OpenAI’s ChatGPT GPT-4o mini and GPT-5 mini, Meta’s Llama 4 Scout, and Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5, amongst others. Subscribers acquire entry to further fashions, together with OpenAI’s ChatGPT GPT-4o, GPT-5.2, and GPT-5.2 Considering, in addition to Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Meta’s Llama 4 Maverick.
The comfort of not having to modify amongst totally different web sites—and of protecting your total dialog historical past throughout a number of LLMs in a single place—is sufficient cause to like Duck.ai.
However as you might need surmised by now, the primary benefit of the Duck.ai chatbot is privateness. In the event you’ve ever wished you possibly can use Meta’s or OpenAI’s LLMs with out these corporations monitoring you—properly, now, you’ll be able to.
Duck.ai retains your prompts non-public
Although Duck.ai lets you use numerous variations of OpenAI’s ChatGPT fashions, OpenAI won’t ever know that you simply, particularly, are the one typing the prompts (supplied you don’t immediately or not directly determine your self by means of the prompts themselves). That’s as a result of irrespective of which mannequin you choose in Duck.ai, DuckDuckGo strips all metadata out of your question earlier than sending your immediate to the LLM supplier for processing. Critically, this metadata consists of your IP tackle, which is among the most important methods Massive Tech corporations know when the identical individual is utilizing their companies.
However Duck.ai goes additional in defending your privateness. Along with stripping metadata out of your prompts, DuckDuckGo won’t use your queries to coach any of its AI, and DuckDuckGo additionally has agreements in place with the mannequin suppliers it really works with to make sure that none of your prompts or related information is used to coach their AI fashions. These agreements additionally state that the mannequin suppliers should delete your anonymized prompts inside 30 days (topic to authorized and security compliance guidelines).
However there’s a 3rd enormous benefit of utilizing Duck.ai. For many LLMs, resembling OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, if you need the chatbot to avoid wasting your chat historical past as a way to reference your chats sooner or later, it’s good to create an account. However by creating that account, the chatbot supplier is aware of who you might be.
Duck.ai permits even nameless customers to retailer their chat historical past. It may do that as a result of Duck.ai chats are saved domestically on the person’s gadget (their laptop computer or cellphone) and never on Duck.ai’s servers. Which means that whereas Duck.ai and its LLM suppliers won’t ever hold a report of your chats, you’ll be able to nonetheless preserve one your self (supplied you don’t clear your browser’s cache).
After all, customers may also select to disable native saved historical past on their gadgets in order that others who use the identical laptop can’t see their prompting historical past. And Duck.ai even gives a one-click “burn” button to rapidly wipe a chat out of your laptop.
So, what are the drawbacks?
After utilizing Duck.ai for a couple of weeks, it’s turn out to be my go-to chatbot. Nonetheless, there are some essential caveats I ought to add to that assertion.
First, I don’t think about myself a “heavy” chatbot person. I principally use it for fast searches or gentle analysis (and virtually by no means belief the outcomes with out fact-checking them with exterior sources).
My comparatively gentle chatbot utilization means I don’t require the newest and best AI fashions. In the event you do, then Duck.ai won’t be for you. That’s as a result of the “free” fashions each person of Duck.ai has entry to are previous by LLM requirements (for instance, OpenAI’s GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini got here out practically two years in the past).
Those that subscribe to DuckDuckGo’s VPN service (which additionally gives identification theft restoration companies) have entry to newer fashions, together with OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 /Considering. Nonetheless, even that mannequin is a number of months previous and has been surpassed by GPT-5.3 and GPT-5.4.
A second caveat is that whereas Duck.ai gives LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, amongst others, it doesn’t convey collectively all the preferred chatbots in a single place. For instance, Perplexity, DeepSeek, and Google’s Gemini will not be choices in Duck.ai. In the event you use these LLMs, Duck.ai shouldn’t be presently appropriate for you.
However apart from these caveats, Duck.ai is a superb alternative for individuals like me—“common” customers who’re high quality with any succesful LLM and who, above all, prioritize privateness.
