DuckDuckGo has announced new voice chat Duck.ai, capabilities for its private AI chatbot platform, which launched last March.
The new feature allows users to have real-time conversations with large language models (LLMs) over an encrypted relay connection. OpenAI provides the LLMs that support voice conversations, but DuckDuckGo states that neither it nor OpenAI stores any audio after the conversations end.
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“Voice conversations on Duck.ai are private, anonymized , and never used to train the underlying AI,” the company said in its announcement. OpenAI is also contractually limited in how it can use voice conversation data.
How does DuckDuckGo describe the service?
“DuckDuckGo protects your audio stream and voice data in several ways to ensure that only OpenAI (the provider of the voice chat model) can access it and only to answer your questions:
– Ephemeral processing: Live audio is only transmitted while you are speaking. Once the session ends, neither DuckDuckGo nor OpenAI retain recordings of your voice.
– No training: Your audio data and model responses are not used to train AI models.
– Secure connection: Audio streams are encrypted during transmission via WebRTC and relay server .
– Zero data retention: Neither DuckDuckGo nor OpenAI retain any conversation data after a voice conversation“.
See also: ChatGPT: Voice Mode now works within an existing conversation
The feature works in most browsers except Firefox, for which support is still in development, according to the company. Voice chat is free within daily limits and does not require an account, while subscribers ($10/month) have higher daily limits, along with access to DuckDuckGo's VPN, Personal Information Removal, and Identity Theft Restoration.
See also: Anthropic brings voice mode to Claude chatbot
Users can disable voice chat at any time through Duck.ai's settings if they change their mind about using the feature. Duck.ai also offers access to non-voice models from OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, and Mistral.
