Technologies

Try DuckDuckGo’s New AI Feature, DuckAssist, Now for Free

DuckAssist isn’t a chatbot, so you shouldn’t get weird responses like you can with some other AI tools.

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has a new optional artificial intelligence feature called DuckAssist. Users of DuckDuckGo’s browser apps or extensions can access a beta version of the feature now, for free.

Unlike ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing AI, DuckAssist isn’t a chatbot, DuckDuckGo says. Instead, it’s an addition to the search engine’s existing Instant Answers feature. Instant Answers taps various online sources to give you a quick answer to your query without you having to click one of the links in the search results. Now DuckAssist can lend a hand, but it pulls from a smaller set of sources.

Enter a question into the DuckDuckGo search bar and DuckAssist scans Wikipedia, and occasionally Britannica, to generate an answer. DuckAssist uses technology from ChatGPT creator OpenAI and Anthropic to summarize the answer and make the response more conversational. When DuckAssist answers, it also links to the Wikipedia or Britannica article it pulled its answer from.

For now, the best way to use DuckAssist is to ask questions with straightforward answers, Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo’s founder and CEO, wrote in a blog post. That means DuckAssist can answer questions like, «What is the capital of Nigeria?» better than questions with qualitative elements like, «What is the best Legend of Zelda game?» (But this writer says Majora’s Mask.)

Weinberg wrote that wording a query in the form of a question will make it more likely that DuckAssist will generate a response. He also wrote that if you’re pretty sure Wikipedia has the answer to your question, adding «wiki» to any question also makes it more likely that DuckAssist will appear.

DuckAssist answering the question "What color is 'the dress?'" — DuckAssist can settle the age old question, «What color is ‘the dress’?»

DuckDuckGo

DuckAssist won’t always generate the correct answer, according to Weinberg. The tool might struggle to correctly answer complex questions, too.

«There’s a limit to the amount of information the feature can summarize,» Weinberg wrote. «Inaccuracies can happen if our relevancy function is off, unintentionally omitting key sentences, or if there’s an underlying error in the source material given.»

DuckDuckGo said DuckAssist is anonymous, doesn’t use queries to train its AI model and doesn’t share personally identifiable information with third parties.

Though DuckAssist is being released in beta, DuckDuckGo said that if the beta goes well, it plans to release DuckAssist to all search users in the weeks ahead. DuckDuckGo also plans to release other AI-enhanced search and browsing features in the near future.

You can also disable DuckAssist in search settings if you don’t want to use the tool. Disabling DuckAssist will also disable all Instant Answers outside of DuckAssist, too.

230209-yt-microsoft-bing-vs-google-bard — Microsoft’s and Google’s AI tools were introduced in February.

CNET

DuckDuckGo joins other tech companies, like Microsoft and Google, that have introduced their own AI tools to the public in the last few months.

Many of these other tools are chatbots based on, or developed in opposition to, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and they let you carry on a conversation with an AI, to a limited degree.

Despite the buzz around such tools, AI is still a work in progress. In December, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, said users of ChatGPT should be careful.

«ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness,» Altman tweeted. «It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. It’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness.»

In February, Microsoft began limiting the number of responses that its Bing AI can send, to stop conversations from getting weird and confusing the chatbot. It later relaxed the restriction, but only slightly.

Some AI tools, like Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, have also included inaccurate information in their responses. DuckDuckGo said that because DuckAssist draws from a limited number of sources, the chance of the tool generating incorrect information is reduced.

For more, check out how Microsoft has limited Bing’s AI chatbot, what to know about Google’s chatbot Bard and what to know about Snapchat’s AI chatbot.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

Technologies

DeepSeek Releases New Reasoning Models to Take On ChatGPT and Gemini

China’s DeepSeek is set on beating American AI firms.

DeepSeek, the China-based AI company, has released two new reasoning-capable AI models, V3.2 and V3.2-Speciale, with the latter outperforming Gemini 3.0 Pro and GPT-5 High in benchmarks, the company said in news release on Monday. At the moment, V3.2 is available on the app and web, whereas V3.2-Speciale can only be accessed via the API.

DeepSeek V3.2 is a follow-up to V3.2-Exp, which stands for experimental and was released in September. The Hangzhou-based AI company says V3.2 surpasses the performance of OpenAI’s GPT-5 in reasoning benchmarks and has reasoning performance «on par» with Gemini 3.0 Pro. DeepSeek didn’t release testing against GPT-5 Pro. That could be because ChatGPT is blocked in China. What’s more, DeepSeek said it’s committed to staying open source, meaning any company can load DeepSeek’s models for free. But considering V3.2 has 685 billion parameters, it can only run on a giant server stack with millions of dollars in hardware.

🏆 World-Leading Reasoning
🔹 V3.2: Balanced inference vs. length. Your daily driver at GPT-5 level performance.
🔹 V3.2-Speciale: Maxed-out reasoning capabilities. Rivals Gemini-3.0-Pro.
🥇 Gold-Medal Performance: V3.2-Speciale attains gold-level results in IMO, CMO, ICPC World… pic.twitter.com/ZFGzDMshBy

— DeepSeek (@deepseek_ai) December 1, 2025

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

DeepSeek didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

DeepSeek’s release of 3.2 comes as the company continues to put American AI companies on notice. The company first gained worldwide attention earlier this year when it released a reasoning-capable model online, for free.

It immediately turned the narrative about reasoning models on its head, showing that it’s possible to run smarter, more capable AI models at a fraction of the cost. This spooked Wall Street, with some wondering if OpenAI, Google and Anthropic weren’t innovating fast enough.

Since then, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude have all released reasoning-level models for free, with higher-level «thinking» models being available for paid subscribers.

DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale won gold in the 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the company said.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Technologies

The Best Portable Gaming Consoles to Gift This Holiday Season

Confused on whether to buy a Steam Deck, Xbox Ally X or Legion Go 2? Here’s which one is right for you.

Now that we’re into Cyber Week and the thick of the holiday shopping season, there are going to be a ton of video games on sale. What likely won’t be on sale are gaming handhelds.

These portable consoles are the hottest trend in gaming right now, with companies making their own handheld. With so many choices out there, you might be wondering which one to get. Luckily, this guide will help you decide what gaming handheld is the one to pick.

What else to buy

Cases: If you’re buying one of the handhelds up above and want to get some important accessories, or maybe some more affordable gifts for the grandparents to buy, then a case is the way to go. Each handheld has different cases made just for it or you can buy one case to fit them all.

MicroSD cards: With the exception of the PlayStation Portal, all the handhelds listed support extra storage, and if you’re buying a handheld for someone who does a lot of gaming, they probably have too many games to fit on the default storage on the handheld. The Steam Deck, Xbox Ally X and Legion Go 2 support traditional microSD cards, while the Switch 2 uses microSD Express cards. The minimum storage you’d want to buy is 512GB, but ideally you’ll want 1TB.

Docks: Of all the handhelds, the Switch 2 is the only one that comes with a proper dock. The others you’ll have to buy separately. The PlayStation Portal is a bit of an outlier when it comes to docks, as it doesn’t connect to a TV, but there is a charger dock available for purchase to make sure it’s always charged. There are docks that can fit the Steam Deck, Xbox Ally X and Legion Go 2, but it’s recommended to get those docks designed specifically for them.

Power banks: All the handhelds, with the exception of the PlayStation Portal, have about 2 hours of battery life if you max out the settings while playing. The Portal, since it’s just streaming, has a battery life of 6 to 8 hours. For those gaming on the go, having a power bank is practically a necessity. There is a wide range of power banks out there, and 10,000mAh would be the absolute minimum, as that can double the battery life of most handhelds.