Better privacy with DuckDuckGo's AI bot
Privacy issues have always bothered users and business organizations. With the rapid adoption of AI, the threats are also rising. DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai chatbot benefits from this.
The latest report from Similarweb revealed that traffic to Duck.ai increased rapidly last month. The traffic recorded 11.1 million visits in February 2026, 300% more than January.
Duck.ai's sudden traffic jump
The statistics seem small when compared with the most popular chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
Similarweb estimates that ChatGPT recorded 5.4 billion visits in February 2026, and Google’s Gemini recorded 2.1 billion, whereas Claude recorded 290.3 million.
For DuckDuckGo, the numbers show a good sign, as the bot was launched as beta in 2025, and has shown a sharp rise in visits.
DuckDuckGo browser is known for its privacy, and the company aims to apply the same principle to its AI bot. Duck.ai doesn't run a bespoke LLM, it uses frontier models from Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI, but it doesn't expose your IP address and personal data.
Duck.ai's privacy policy reads, "In addition, we have agreements in place with all model providers that further limit how they can use data from these anonymous requests, including not using Prompts and Outputs to develop or improve their models, as well as deleting all information received once it is no longer necessary to provide Outputs (at most within 30 days, with limited exceptions for safety and legal compliance),”
Duck.ai is famous now
What is the reason for this sudden surge? The bot has two advantages over individual commercial bots like ChatGPT and Gemini, it offers an option to toggle between multiple models and better privacy security. The privacy aspect sets it apart. Users on Reddit have praised Duck.ai, one person noting "it's way better than Google's," which means Gemini.
Privacy concerns in AI bots
In March, Anthropic rejected a few applications of its technology for mass surveillance and weapons submitted by the Department of Defense. The DoD retaliated by breaking the contract. Soon after, OpenAI stepped in.
The incident stirred controversies around privacy concerns and ethical AI use. This explains why users may prefer chatbots like Duck.ai that safeguard user data from both the government and the big tech.