One practical effect of this can be seen in downloads of alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, which have greatly increaesed in the last few weeks, TechCrunch writes.
From May 20 to May 25, just after Google unveiled a new search box, weekly installs went up 18.1%, peaking at 30% on May 25. It grew even stronger on iOS, peaking at 70% week on week in the same period.
— Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg tells TechCrunch, — We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.
The search engine does use some AI to filter out images, and offers an AI chat product at duck.ai, but is famously privacy-focused, doesn’t store a thing, and also provides the AI-free noai.duckduckgo.com.
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