By Michaela Gordoni
Safe search engine DuckDuckGo just introduced a new feature very relevant for our time — the option to remove AI images from search results.
The solution is a permanent function that can be turned on and off, unlike Google’s settings, which have to be adjusted on a search-by-search basis, Life Hacker reported.
To adjust the setting on DuckDuckGo, go to the website, enter a search, click on the Images tab, then click on AI Images in the settings toolbar. Choose Hide from the dropdown options. The site will remember your settings in future searches.
You can also get quick no-AI results from noai.duckduckgo.com.
The company admits that the “block list is not exhaustive.” The list relies on open sources, like uBlockOrigin and the uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist. The latter is a manually made list that names over 1,000 sites known for AI content.
The news comes as complaints grow among internet users about seeing unwanted AI content. A trending “baby peacock” gained attention for showing more AI images than real ones.
DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg said the biggest difference between his search engine and others is users are not tracked.
“When you search on DuckDuckGo, you’re completely anonymous. Since Snowden and other revelations about tracking on the Internet, people have tried us out. Ultimately we also think we’re a better search experience,” he told Forbes. “We have a cleaner design and we think it’s more fun.”
“As a consumer, your digital footprint is significantly reduced if you use DuckDuckGo,” he said. “Also, we don’t know who you are so we’re not tailoring our results to you. That means that when you’re doing political research, when you go to Google, they’ll show you links they think you want to click on, ” but DuckDuckGo won’t.
DuckDuckGo isn’t anti-AI and even has a few AI tools, but it wants it all to be optional. Its AI chat system, Duck.ai, allows users to chat with a bot privately. It doesn’t track or train on your data, according to the site’s help pages.
Related: Privacy-Focused Search Engine DuckDuckGo Reaches 100 Million Daily Searches
Other organizations are getting on board with trimming down AI results. Hiya launched a Chrome extension last year that detects deepfake audio across some platforms. And Bing has partnered with StopNCII and other groups to remove explicit AI media from its results, Digwatch reported.
As the AI race continues forward at breakneck speed, it’s important that users are able to exercise discernment and have some control within the tools they use. DuckDuckGo realizes that.
Read Next: AI Is Training on Images of Your Children
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