You can optionally change your Duck.ai storage settings so that chats are instead saved on a longer-term basis in encrypted form on our servers hosted on our cloud providers ("Sync & Backup"). With Sync & Backup, the decryption key is only stored on your devices, so only you can decrypt this information. For example, DuckDuckGo cannot decrypt your chats. When setting up Sync & Backup on a device, an encrypted date and description of your browser and operating system is saved, so you can view which devices are synced in the DuckDuckGo browser or your Duck.ai settings. Sync & Backup chats are automatically deleted if not accessed for a period of 18 months.

All metadata that contains personal information (for example, your IP address) is removed before sending Prompts to underlying model providers (for example, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, together.ai). If you submit personal information in your Prompts, it may be reproduced in the Outputs, but no one can tell (including us and the underlying model providers) whether it was you personally submitting the Prompts or someone else.

We have agreements with model providers to further protect your privacy.

As noted above, we call model providers on your behalf, so your personal information (for example, IP address) is not exposed to them. 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). Some models have different levels of privacy protections, including Zero Data Retention and Zero Provider Visibility. Those are described on a per-chat basis in the privacy dialogue for that chat session.

We offer voice chat and dictation as optional features.

All the information above applies to your use of voice chat and dictation, but there are a few specific things that apply to these features. When you start a voice chat, we connect you to the model provider through an encrypted relay connection that we cannot decrypt. Your audio is sent to the model provider in real time, and the provider returns two outputs: an audio response and a text transcript. The text transcript is automatically saved locally on your device unless you have opted out of saving recent chats. The audio response is streamed in real time and cannot be saved. When you use dictation, your audio is sent to the model provider on your behalf, and only a text transcript is returned. As with voice chat, the text transcript is saved locally on your device unless you have opted out of saving recent chats. For both features, once your session ends, neither DuckDuckGo nor the model provider keep a recording of your voice. You can opt-out of using voice chat or dictation at any time by going to Duck.ai settings and toggling voice chat or dictation off.

You can optionally share your chats with others.