At the beginning of April the news began to circulate that ChatGPT could now be used without registration. This information was much anticipated, since yes, it has been a possibility for weeks, but no, not for everyone. I still have to use my account, although I'm doing it a little less lately. My default search engine is the duck, and among the reasons that make me choose it are some !bangs that I have already gotten used to. Furthermore, for some time now it has been offering what they have called DuckDuckGo AI Chat.
DuckDuckGo's first move in the AI ​​direction was DuckAssist. If we typed a question in the search box, they often gave us a direct answer, but they decided to abandon the project. Some time later, what they have not presented with great fanfare is the DuckDuckGo AI Chat that not many know, perhaps due to the lack of news, and combines the best of ChatGPT with DuckDuckGo's private philosophy.
DuckDuckGo AI Chat: ChatGPT or Claude with greater privacy
Before continuing, I would like to say that this proposal does not depend only on the OpenAI chatbot. It actually lets us choose between ChatGPT or Claude, 3.5 Turbo and 1.2 Instant respectively at the time of writing this article. To access the service you have to go to this link, choose a model and start chatting. If the default duck search engine is used, we can also write "!chat consultation", without the quotes and replacing "consultation" with our request, to start an almost direct conversation. And I say "almost" because, at least currently, the chat does not start instantly; you have to hit send. I don't know if this will be fixed in the future.
And what we will see is something like what appears in the header screenshot. It is very similar to what we see in ChatGPT, but of course, like DDG nothing is saved we don't have a history on the side panel. In that section, the DuckDuckGo chatbot tells us which model we are using, that we have privacy protection activated and a section to send comments and read more information. The only special thing on the chat side is the button with the fire icon, which if we click on it the conversation will disappear.
Without registration and with more precise answers, but still in beta
DuckDuckGo AI Chat does not require registration, and everything it does, it does by offering results as its search engine does. The main difference between the free ChatGPT and the one DuckDuckGo is using is that OpenAI only gives us access to GPT 3.5, while DuckDuckGo allows us to use GPT 3.5 Turbo. It is an evolution, and although the answers may seem similar, in reality they have their differences.
GPT 3.5 and earlier are models that try to assist us, but sometimes fail when trying to provide too much information. Don't get me wrong: giving information is not bad, but sometimes it is redundant; receiving a 3 paragraph response when you could stay at one is excessive. That, among other things, is where DuckDuckGo AI Chat is best, although is in beta phase (and could suffer the same fate as DuckAssist…).
And everything we are saying about ChatGPT also applies to Claude.
From my point of view, the duck company's relatively new proposal is the best alternative to ChatGPT and Claude long. It offers us practically the same thing, but without registration. The only bad thing is for those users who want to save the conversations, since it is not possible in the DDG chat. If you need to keep a record of chats, it is best to create an account and use the official options. The most DuckDuckGo offers in this regard is a button to copy an answer, which should generally be enough.
If this doesn't seem good to you, you can also read our article on the alternative improvements to ChatGPT, where we talk about all kinds of options, including some that allow us to chat with bots that imitate famous people.