#duckduckgo

The filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists, including the ‘nuclear’ list, provided by uBlockOrigin and uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist,” DuckDuckGo said in a post on X. “While it won’t catch 100% of AI-generated results, it will greatly reduce the number of AI-generated images you see.

Google’s removal of its search function is going great btw

https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

Install this blocklist using the instructions on the GitHub page. For Firefox, you will need to install uBlockOrigin for this. Google Chrome no longer allows the uBlockOrigin extension, so I'm assuming you're at least primarily a Firefox user - or about to be (see browser alternatives below).

For Google Chrome or mobile browsers, this will work with uBlacklist. See the GitHub page for full details on compatibility.

Remove AI Widgets:

If you go to your uBlockOrigin Filter lists page, you can select to filter out AI Widgets - this should completely remove the 'AI Mode' widget/button from your Google search page, in addition to the work done by the Huge AI Blocklist.

Using the uBlockOrigin Huge AI Blocklist filter has made my Google searches look like they used to, and gives me genuine search results.

Look at this. It's beautiful. It's informative. It's not a heap of burning trash bloated with fake information made up by a hallucinating chat bot.

We can go even further: return to the old school search results.

Now, the above results are great and should be free of generative AI junk, but some people would rather not see any of the summary widgets or 'people also ask' box at all. Fear not! You can remove all that by using the 'Web' mode in the Google search bar. Click the 'More' drop down menu and select 'Web'.

Huzzah! Incredible. It's like a functional search engine again.

You can make this the default Google search mode in Google Chrome using Method 1 from this page (https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/). Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a way to do this in Firefox too. This is why for the most part I still use DuckDuckGo (see below) as my default search engine, and only use Google to supplement my searches on the rare occasion I'm just missing something.

Remember, if you clear your cookies, your search engine preferences will reset, including any settings you enabled/disabled to avoid AI. This applies to DuckDuckGo as well; check your settings every time you clear your browser!

Extra filters (optional):

I've also added four filters (their order doesn't matter) to the My Filters page. Full disclosure: I'm not sure they still work, or may only work on Chrome, but I'm keeping them anyway, just in case.

From https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1i7kg83/comment/m8lllwr/: see which solution in the list works for you, it seems to be different for everybody.

google.*##div[jscontroller]:not(:has(div[jscontroller].YzCcne)):has(.YzCcne)

From https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/:

www.google.com##.Beswgc

www.google.com##.olrp5b

www.google.com##.hdzaWe

Make sure you hit the apply changes button when you add filters.

Browser alternatives: escaping Google Chrome.

If you haven't jumped ship from Chrome yet, I'd recommend doing so. Sometimes Chrome outperforms Firefox for niche purposes or because a website doesn't bother to fully support non-Chrome browsers, but the days of Chrome being the superior browser are long gone — by about 10 years. If you're trying to escape Chromium browsers, beware that a lot of the popular Chrome alternatives are just Chrome in a different hat.

Firefox has been the most popular non-Chromium browser for years, and for good reason. However, the company running Mozilla Firefox has annoyed their users, me included, by refusing to take an anti- generative-ai stance, and even included AI features in the Mozilla Firefox browser. Most Firefox users specifically use it because they hate Google's enshittification and want a privacy-focused, clean browser that doesn't hog their RAM and CPU for no reason. So, you can imagine that Mozilla's attitude has pissed us all off recently. You can turn off the AI features in Firefox with the built-in settings, but the company has recently steered straight into the burning garbage heap by saying they want to make the browser based on AI.

Waterfox and LibreWolf:

There are really good alternatives based on Firefox (open-source) which are not affiliated with Mozilla (the company), if you don't like how it operates. Waterfox and LibreWolf are even more trimmed down and privacy-focused than Mozilla's Firefox, and don't use AI. Anti-ai statements: Waterfox and LibreWolf.

From this page: https://programming.dev/post/42546774

In short: LibreWolf is for those who want a “locked-down” fortress out of the box, while Waterfox is for those who want a privacy-conscious browser that still feels like a normal, convenient daily driver. Choose LibreWolf if: You want the highest level of privacy without having to manually edit config files, and you don’t mind occasionally “fixing” a broken website or re-logging into accounts. Choose Waterfox if: You want a privacy-respecting browser that supports Firefox Sync, has an Android counterpart, and handles streaming sites/logins without any extra friction (it supports WideWine out of the box, which lets you stream DRM protected content (netflix, hulu, disney, etc). — [email protected]

I've heard good things about both of these browsers and will investigate them further to decide whether to personally switch from Mozilla Firefox.

DuckDuckGo:

I would also recommend installing the DuckDuckGo extension to your browsers and setting it to be your default search engine.

I've had DuckDuckGo installed on my browsers, Chrome or Firefox, for like 10 years now. It is a good search engine, it's unobtrusive, and blocks trackers, cookies, and does not save any data about you. I've also used it as my default mobile browser for years, along with Firefox mobile, which you can add the AI Blocklist to (see again the GitHub page). I haven't tried the DuckDuckGo desktop browser yet, but I imagine it works just fine like the mobile version. I think DuckDuckGo's browser is also Chromium-based, at least indirectly. I use Firefox with the DuckDuckGo extension so I can have a widely-supported, non-Chromium browser, but include all of DuckDuckGo's anti-tracking features.

Note: DuckDuckGo has included AI in its browser product, however you can opt-out of all AI features with the built-in settings and they will not push it on you like Google does. I hope they remove AI features entirely in the future, but for now I am comfortable with the barriers in place to keep AI out of my face. Firefox also has AI features like Chrome does, which you can turn off with the built-in settings.

There's also noai.duckduckgo search, an alternative version of its normal search engine which removes AI-generated images and turns off AI results/assists by default. Even though DuckDuckGo's inclusion of any AI features annoys me, its policy to make these features 100% optional builds trust with this browser/extension/search engine.

You can always use Google search if you need to, but with uBlockOrigin and the AI Blocklist filter added on, at least you shouldn't have AI-altered search results or the AI overview anymore.

Other browsers exist, probably:

There are certainly more non-Chromium alternatives out there, but Firefox, Waterfox, and LibreWolf are the top three recommended to me. That link to alternatives, plus this ComputerCity page are the best lists I could find in a brief search. If you google "non-Chromium browsers" you'll get a lot of mixed results which require a bit of digging to realise they're not really recommending you what you looked for at all.

I've heard about Ecosia over the years, and while I like the idea of a search engine that plants a tree for each query, I don't think that's actually what happens — at least, that's what they used to be reputed to do, but I believe that's an unsustainable business model which has likely changed. In 2026, Ecosia says it uses 100% of its profits for the planet and runs its search engine off clean energy. That's cool! It's still Chromium-based. And it also uses generative AI for chat bots, so I don't trust its principles on environmentalism. I need to do more reading on this to form a stronger opinion about it.

I hope this post has helped at least some of you have a better experience browsing the web and googling your questions.

I was initially disappointed when switching from Google to DuckDuckGo since it seemed the latter is just as filled with unavoidable AI slop, if not seemingly more so. (Since I previously had a Firefox extension to block all "AI overview" results from Google, which of course didn't work on DuckDuckGo, meaning I was now seeing even more stupid AI search results after the switch than before.)

Then I stumbled across this Bluesky post about DuckDuckGo's dedicated AI-free domain, noai.duckduckgo.com. I'd already switched my default search engine on Firefox to DuckDuckGo, but that post got me wondering if it was possible to replace my default search engine with THIS version of DuckDuckGo instead. Turns out, you can! On both desktop and mobile! So I wrote out a tutorial below if anyone wants to follow the same process.

Note: This no-AI domain might not catch everything, but it does eliminate a lot of the AI slop, which is a win in my book. According to the screenshot in the post: "The system relies on curated blocklists, including uBlockOrigin's Huge AI Blocklist, to detect and suppress Al-generated imagery." While this seems to indicate the site only blocks AI images, I haven't seen any "AI overview" text search results either since I started using it. Double win.

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Desktop instructions

1. In Firefox, open a new tab and look on the left side of the search bar. Click on the dropdown menu with "This time search with..." at the top and all the alternate search engines in the list below. I've already added NoAI DuckDuckGo, so you won't see that option yet; instead, click Search Settings at the very bottom.

2. (Alternatively, go straight to Firefox Search Settings by entering this in your web address bar: about:preferences#search)

3. Again, you won't find NoAI DuckDuckGo in the "Default Search Engine" box at the top...yet. You will have to add it first. Scroll all the way to the bottom where you will find the "Search Shortcuts" menu, and click "Add".

4. This is what I typed to add NoAI DuckDuckGo to my search engine list, which is the prerequisite step to making it the default search engine.

(Typed out below if you want to just copy and paste)

Search engine name: NoAI DuckDuckGo

URL with %s in place of search term: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/search?q=%s

Keyword (optional): @ noaiddg [remove space]

5. Now scroll to the top of the Search Settings page, where you will now be able to select "NoAI DuckDuckGo" from the dropdown menu of default search engine options!

6. Open a new tab and type in a search term to test. I searched "drawing references." It's still using the default DuckDuckGo logo on the left, but as you can see, the search info appearing below the search term is already pointing to the custom NoAI search engine we set.

7. And voila, it did indeed pull from noai.duckduckgo.com as the default search engine, not regular DuckDuckGo.

(I believe the "AI images: hide" toggle is in the basic DuckDuckGo search engine as well, but in the NoAI version, it's toggled off by default.)

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Mobile instructions

The process is even easier on mobile, especially if you copy and paste!

1. Go to the Firefox app, tap on the hamburger menu on the bottom right, and open "Settings"

2. Under "General," tap on "Search" (again, if you haven't manually added NoAI DuckDuckGo, you won't see that option yet)

3. Scroll down to "Alternative Search Engines" and tap "Add Search Engine"

4. Add the same info as you would for the desktop version, BUT look at the link carefully after you paste it, as on mine it added a random extra "25" at the end that I had to delete. Make sure the %s at the very end of the link stays intact, as it won't accept the search engine without it.

Again, here's the URL to copy and paste (make sure you get the whole link with %s at the end):

https://noai.duckduckgo.com/search?q=%s

5. Now scroll back up to "Default Search Engine," and you should see "NoAI DuckDuckGo" (or whatever you named yours when you added it) as an option you can select from the dropdown menu!

6. Again, you can test it in a new tab if you want, and it should pull your search results from the NoAI version of DuckDuckGo instead of the regular version.

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This tutorial was just for Firefox and the screenshots are both from Apple devices, but I'm guessing it's also possible to set a custom default search engine on other devices and browsers using a similar process.

Here's how you make noai.duckduckgo.com your default search engine so you don't have to toggle the filter on every time you do a search:

1) Make sure your Firefox is up to date.

2a) Go to the website and right click in the search field and select 'Add Search Engine' and confirm with 'Add Engine':

OR!

2b) Go into Firefox's settings and under Search, scroll down until you find the option to manually add a search engine:

And the URL you'll want to enter is https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=%s

3) Either way, you will now have to scroll to the top of your Search settings in Firefox and then change your Default Search Engine to the one you just added.

As for other browsers... I don't have a clue, fuck Chrome in particular.

not sure if you can see this image because it's tiny but I was using duckduckgo (the "no ai" version! apparently!) to search this actress from the 1920s called Rose Blossom. Cool, I think, I wonder if she would count for the bob tourney? so I go to see what she looks like and:

louise brooks

clara bow

not sure who this is but i don't think it's rose

clara bow again

jacqueline logan

jobyna ralston

not sure but the literal caption says "eloise stream" so? her?

someone who looks familiar but i can't place rn

gloria swanson

ruth wilcox

natalie barrache

claire windsor

virginia valli

myran loy

lillian fucking gish

why the fuck??? why the fuck?? three years ago i swear I would have found something approximately close to the actual actress I was looking up with my actual search terms instead of just a smattering of "eh close enough they're all ladies from the 20s." and i'm catching this because i know gloria fucking swanson when i see her! this is so confusing for people who don't recognize they're being handed 37 of the wrong people when you search for an image! and this is just one search, earlier i was looking up ethel moses and got dorothy dandridge. what the fuck.

so first we have our bare essentials, UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. the best adblocker youll ever have that even works on youtube (which sometimes yt cracks down on it, just reload over and over or switch to a private browsing tab and paste your video to watch it there with no ads, works every time and in a day or two it'll be working just fine again), and badger blocks hidden trackers while you're browsing

Port Authority blocks malicious websites from scanning your computer

Privacy Possum fucks up any commercial data a site gathers from your computer and reports back false info instead of your real info

ClearURLs gets rid of all the tracking elements in your URLs, and instead just gives you the straight site

Consent-O-Matic automatically handles (or at least minimmizes) the cookie pop-ups you have to agree or decline to, and declines everything except what's necessary for the site to run (and you can customize it as well)

Cookie AutoDelete does what it sounds like it does. When you close your tab, it gets rid of any unnecessary cookies from the site

Decentraleyes protects against tracking through "free", centralized, content delivery

LocalCDN is a fork of Decentraleyes that emulates content delivery networks and prevents 3rd party tracking

Location Guard hides your geographic location from websites, or reports a fake one. It doesn't replace a VPN, but prevents location tracking from being too precise by adding noise

CanvasBlocker and Chameleon help stop JavaScript from fingerprinting your visited sites and spoofs your info respectively

TrackMeNot protects you against search data profiling by giving false searches to the sites requesting information, similar to possum

FlagFox puts a little country flag in your searchbar telling you where the website's server is located

Anti-Adblock Blocker is what it sounds like, it blocks the majority of common anti-adblock solutions

SponsorBlock and Return Youtube Dislike skip sponsored segments on yt and bring back the dislike stats on videos

Hide Google AI Overviews, Slop Evader, and Microslop get rid of the annoying AI overview that's not even right more than half the time at the top of your searches, removes most AI results, and will change every instace of the word Micros*ft on your computer to Microslop even in youtube subtitles

Malwarebytes Browser Guard has saved me from malicious links a handful of times, and doesn't flag every little thing ever (Malwarebytes is great to have on your computer in general, it can scan your computer for anything unsafe and quarantine anything that is, for free. you can get antivirus too if you pay)

Chrome Mask some websites are little pieces of shit and don't want us to have nice things, so if they only work for chrome, just turn this on and boom baby your site works it thinks you're on chrome

Nitter Redirect if you're like me and refuse to get on twitter but still want to be able to view links your favorite people send you, this lets you look at them without making an account

Ghostery - Privacy Adblocker helps take care of anything your other adblockers or cookie handlers might have missed, and helps speed up your browsing experience

Animalese Typing 10/10 no notes

CustomTube restores old Youtube UI in case you miss it

And I also use DuckDuckGo ofc