DuckDuckGo AI answers were first added to the privacy-focused search engine back in 2023, and have now finally exited beta but you can still switch the feature off.Also out of beta is free, private access to your choice of AI chatbot DuckDuckGo AI search resultsOne of the big changes made by Google was its AI Overview, which appears above search results. DuckDuckGo did the same thing with Assist, initially as a beta feature in 2023.The company says that Assist has now exited beta, and is also now pulling in its information from more sources. The feature was previously limited to using Wikipedia.Recent updates to AI-assisted answers include expanding sources across the web, beyond just Wikipedia; answering English-language queries outside the U.S.; and adding customization that lets you decide how often you want answers to appear: often, sometimes (default), on-demand, or never.You can choose how often AI answers are shown, including the option to completely disable them.Navigate to the AI Features section of yoursearch settings. If you really like our AI-assisted answers, change Assist toOften, which will make them appear over 20% of time. On the other hand, if you never want to see any AI features, turn Chat toOffand Assist toNever.Duck.ai offers free, private access to chatbotsDuck.ai is also now out of beta. This lets you use a variety of AI models anonymously, with no account required, and a guarantee that your chats are never used for AI training.If you want to start with chat, tryDuck.ai(previously called DuckDuckGo AI Chat), a free and account-less way to access popular AI chatbots, privately. Models are periodically updated and currently feature GPT-4o mini and o3-mini from OpenAI, open-source models Meta Llama 3.3 and Mistral Small 3, and Claude 3 Haiku from Anthropic. Chats are anonymized via proxying and never used for AI model training.You can navigate directly tohttps://duck.ai/or via the optional chat icons within our search engine or browsers. (Theres also a widget on iOS for now.) You can also use the !ai or !chatbang search commandsfrom any browser where you have DuckDuckGo search set as the default search engine.Proxying means your identity is protected.When we generate AI-assisted answers, we anonymously call the underlying AI models used to summarize web sources on your behalf, so your personal information is never exposed to third parties. This method is called proxying. Duck.ai chats work similarly. To accomplish this technically, we remove your IP address completely and use our own IP address instead. This way, the proxied requests are coming from us, not you.If you choose to store recent chats, these are stored locally on your device, not on the companys servers.Highlighted accessoriesImage: DuckDuckGoAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel