DuckDuckGo is asking for a Yes or No vote on AI
duckduckgo.comHi from DuckDuckGo: whoops, you found this early! Launch is Monday — more to come then.
This is a confusing marketing campaign because DDG is very much aware that the people voting on this poll are not a representative sample of DDG users.
Yeah, but there are enough passionate anti-AI people out there that reaching out to them could be the killer marketing move of 2026. The poll is 4% Yes, 96% No when I checked it. It's pretty clear that pro-AI marketing falls flat, see "Copilot + PC"
People pushing AI might get investors today, but companies that take a stand against it might get the customers. Pick one.
If you vote Yes AI, you get a link to https://yesai.duckduckgo.com/ which references http://duck.ai/, DDG's AI platform, and the passionate anti-AI people don't like anything AI adjacent which DDG is doing.
DDG is trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Works in my books. All everyone ever wanted was transparency and a choice, and this does that. AI should be opt in, not use-it-or-else.
What does having both an AI and a non-AI mode have to do with the vote not being a representative sample? Did they promote this vote exclusively to one camp or the other?
Another aspect of internet polls as a marketing technique (and a poor source of representative opinion) is to implicitly encourage voters to brigade a certain option, which just increases visibility to the poll especially if it's a contentious topic.
Case in point: https://bsky.app/profile/lexfeathers.ca/post/3mckp3y57d52b
As long as they dont force people eat the cake, it sounds fine?
No ai goes to it too
I used to evangelize pro AI, but these days I am staunchly anti. Not AI specifically, but corporate involvement in any aspect of it's development or rollout. Behavior to date does not inspire confidence in competence or moral/ethical soundness.
The aggressive non-consensual attempts to force it into every aspect of our lives is itself plenty of proof for the fact we cannot trust it.
It's a general principle in marketing, leadership, parenting, government, etc. that people being told what to do or not having a choice, see:
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-climate-policies-backfire-erod...
and it's the case even if people want actually want the thing!
This looks like a marketing campaign to me too. It makes sense to just give users an option: In fact, users can already turn off AI in DDG search results by clicking the settings icon on the top right corner of the Search Assist panel.
I'd be interested to hear the source of that info.
That's just standard sampling bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
It's why public internet polls are more for fun/validating confirmation bias than actually gleaning actionable statistical insight, and why no one does them anymore. In this particular instance, the presentation and call-to-action rules out the "fun" angle of the poll.
So... who is it confusing, exactly?
Confusing is my personal perspective, interpreting the campaign in good faith.
"Yes AI or No AI?" What's the actual question? What am I answering? How is this measured? What are the consequences?
This question screams "I know what I mean, but haven't considered that other people might not have the same context I do". Seems like it's not an important vote but a marketing gimmick which only makes sense after you answer one way or another.
I would expect people's preferences depend on how invasive and how much control there is- Do I want AI to have unfettered access to my filesystem? No. Do I want AI to create useful regex snippets for me? Yes.
Interesting to see that 96% of "voters" went NO, though it's hard to tell what that actually means in terms of their preferences, given the question is so vague.
I think you can read this as product differentiation. If you want AI in your search experience, Google and Bing are jumping up and down to give it to you.
DDG is maybe making a savvy point that they don’t have to follow the hype. And they’re perhaps positioning themselves toward customers that want that.
You're overthinking this.
What consequence? It's a vote, it has no consequence. It's just fun.
And it seems intentionally phrased on an emotional level, so just answer it how you want.
I don't really get how some people over engineer a subjective questionnaire you can answer anonymously into something that has real-life personal consequences.
As it stands I don't know what this poll means. Does "No AI" mean that generative AI should never be used or offered? Does "Yes AI" mean that generative AI should be used for everything all the time?
One might accuse me of being intentionally daft, asserting this to be a simple sentiment poll, but I genuinely can't tell. If it were the case, this should ask "do you overall like or dislike generative AI?" Either way this encourages a lack of nuanced thinking on the subject which both tech bro shills and instinctual AI-luddites oft suffer from. The results of this poll are uninterpretable and the effects on the quality of discourse can only be negative.
Research it, make the useful bits available, don't shove it in my face? Yes!
Whatever everyone else is doing? NOOOOOO!
It's effectively a push poll, and it's not changing anything about DuckDuckGo. They really want you to know that Yes AI or No AI, we gotchu dude, you can do whatever.
Tor Browser and The mullvad browser have NoAI enabled as default
or add it yourself
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%sPredictably, most people who use ddg will vote "no ai". I don't even know exactly what that means, does it just mean ai-assisted results?
What's the harm in having them generated, but you click a button or expand a collapsed div/section/box to see what is if you're interested.
I get the AI-hate but its unreasonable and emotionally charged application is harmful I think.
I wanted to say "lots of people" like AI search results, but it turns out I am lots of people. I have DDG on almost every browser I use, but for a while now, most of my ddg searches include '!g' to go to google for AI results. I don't really want to spend hours trying different things manually, "how do I do X", the AI result quality is objectively good for the things I search for.
Do you want this product to be a niche product used by a small number of people or not? That's the question really. And there is nothing wrong with wanting that so long as DDG can sustain the product that way. No need for "one size fits all".
But if your aim with DDG is to have a viable competitor to mainstream search engines, then opposing AI search results (despite DDG taking pains to make sure they're not intrusive or privacy-hostile) seems counter-productive.
If someone could articulate for me the hatred for AI, even when you're getting good enough results (are people claiming google search AI result are worse than stackoverflow for example?), I'd really appreciate it. Maybe it's a difference in expectations? I don't expect it to solve things for me, just make it easier to do so. "Give me an example in $language of how I can use this package", boom, I have a good valid example. "How do I troubleshoot error <the error>", boom, a list of really good troubleshooting steps. I don't even have to sign-in, or pay anything, why would anyone oppose this? I feel like I should be opposing it but I'm being ignorant on some topic.
Currently 4% v 96%.
AI produces more unreliable hallucinations and garbage than usefulness.