DuckDuckGo now lets you hide AI-generated images in search results | TechCrunch

Have you noticed how the internet's getting flooded with those weird AI-generated images lately? It's honestly getting harder to find authentic stuff when you're searching online. Well, good news! DuckDuckGo just rolled out a pretty cool feature that lets you filter out all that AI junk from your search results.

I've been using DuckDuckGo for years because of their privacy focus, and this new setting feels like a natural next step. They're basically responding to users who've been complaining that AI images get in the way of finding what they're actually looking for. Makes sense to me - sometimes you just want the real deal, not some computer's interpretation.

So how do you actually use this filter? It's super easy. Just do a search on DuckDuckGo, click over to the Images tab, and you'll spot a new drop-down menu labeled "AI images." From there, you can pick "show" or "hide" depending on what you want. Or if you'd rather make it permanent, you can turn on the filter in your search settings by hitting the "Hide AI-Generated Images" option. Done!

This couldn't come at a better time. The web is absolutely drowning in what people are calling "AI slop" - you know, that low-quality garbage churned out by generative AI technology. Ugh. I've found myself getting increasingly frustrated when searching for authentic images only to get a bunch of AI-generated nonsense instead.

But how does this filter actually work? According to DuckDuckGo's post on X, "The filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists, including the 'nuclear' list, provided by uBlockOrigin and uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist." They admit it won't catch everything, but it should drastically cut down on the AI images cluttering your results.

What I think is kinda funny is their example for this new feature. They show an image search for a baby peacock - which is definitely a dig at Google's embarrassing incident last year when searches for baby peacocks returned mostly AI-generated images instead of actual photos. Talk about missing the point of a search engine!

DuckDuckGo says they're planning to add more filters down the road, but they're being pretty tight-lipped about what those might be. Maybe something to filter out AI-written text too? That'd be nice.

In my experience, this kind of privacy-focused approach to search is becoming more important as AI floods the internet. Being able to hide AI-generated images gives users back some control over their search experience. And isn't that what we all want? Just to find what we're actually looking for without wading through computer-generated junk?

Have you tried DuckDuckGo's new filter yet? I'd be curious to know if it's working well for you. The scam blocker aspect of filtering out fake AI content seems particularly valuable these days when it's getting harder to tell what's real and what's not.