According to TechSpot, DuckDuckGo recently conducted a public vote on AI adoption via its VoteYesOrNoAI.com site. The poll gathered over 175,000 anonymous responses, and a staggering 90% of participants said they did not want any AI features in their search experience. In response, founder Gabriel Weinberg announced the company is honoring that choice by launching two separate search experiences. The new noai.duckduckgo.com URL disables AI features like Search Assist and enables an anti-AI-image filter. Conversely, yesai.duckduckgo.com keeps all AI tools active by default. This move directly challenges Big Tech’s trend of forcing AI into products without a clear opt-out.
A referendum on AI slop
Here’s the thing: this vote isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s a direct reaction to what many perceive as the rapid enshittification of core internet services, especially search. Google’s increasing focus on serving up AI-generated answers over traditional, reliable links has left a lot of users frustrated. They’re tired of what the article calls “AI slop”—low-quality, confidently incorrect, or just plain useless AI content clogging up their results. So when DuckDuckGo, a search engine already popular with privacy-focused users, asked the question, it tapped into a deep well of skepticism. The 90% “no” vote is basically a scream into the void from users who feel ignored by the industry’s AI obsession.
The privacy angle and practical reality
Now, it’s worth noting the audience here. DuckDuckGo’s user base is famously privacy-conscious. And let’s be honest, the current AI boom, built on massive data scraping and opaque training processes, is a privacy nightmare waiting to happen. So it’s likely these voters already held negative views of LLMs. The poll was open to anyone, not just confirmed DuckDuckGo users, which the company admits. But that almost strengthens the result. It means the anti-AI sentiment isn’t confined to a niche group; it’s a broad, vocal chunk of the tech-savvy public. Still, DuckDuckGo can’t offer a completely AI-free experience. It aggregates results from hundreds of sources, many of which are now pumping out AI content. The new “noai” URL is more of a filter than a pure source—it’s their best effort to block the slop at the door.
A new competitive fault line
This creates a fascinating new fault line in the search engine wars. For years, the battle was about privacy (DuckDuckGo) vs. comprehensiveness (Google). Now, there’s a new axis: AI-first vs. AI-optional or even AI-hostile. DuckDuckGo is betting that a significant market exists for people who just want clean, simple, link-based search results. They’re positioning themselves as the anti-Google in the AI era, just as they were in the data-collection era. It’s a smart niche. While Google, Microsoft, and others are all-in on AI, someone has to cater to the skeptics and the fatigued. If Google’s search quality continues to degrade under the weight of its own AI ambitions, alternatives that promise less automation could see a real surge. It’s not about being anti-technology; it’s about user choice and quality control. And right now, a lot of users are choosing “no.”
