Brave Search: Answer with AI takes over, but you can turn it off
Brave Search's new Answer with AI feature is now available. The feature replaces AI Summarizer, which was used on Brave Search previously to provide summaries based on user queries.
In a nutshell: Answer with AI works like an instant answers feature. It returns information to the user using multiple sources, including Brave Search's index.
A search for "how difficult is Japanese to learn" returns a large paragraph of AI generated content at the top of the search results. Context is provided, including links.
The AI feature is not limited to text-only responses. It supports rich media as well and may return it in its answer to the user's query.
Brave Software notes that Answers with AIs responds to informational queries automatically. Users may, however, activate the AI button in the search field to get a response to other queries as well.
Brave Software sees Answers with AI as a significant upgrade of its AI Summarizer. Released in 2023, it returned direct answers to user queries based on web search results.
What you need to know about Answers with AI
Brave Software claims that the feature is unique in several ways:
- Privacy-preserving, according to Brave.
- Near-instant answers.
- AI uses Brave's search index as its source.
Answer with AI is available for free to all users. It supports multiple languages. Full support is offered for searches in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Brave Software says that other languages work as well, but that some responses may be in English.
Answers with AI uses "up-to-date, reliable data" according to Brave Software. The provided answers take multiple intents into consideration.
Company engineers have divided intents into several categories, for example, navigational, informational, and commercial.
Queries like "how to get from Athens airport to the acropolis", "what are the top PS5 games of 2024", and "how to bypass ads on YouTube" are all answered by Answers with AI.
Word of warning: Each AI-generated response has a disclaimer that asks users to "verify critical facts".
How to disable Brave Search's Answer with AI
Brave Search users who do not want Answer with AI responses to their queries may turn the feature off in the settings.
Here is how that is done:
- Load https://search.brave.com/settings in the browser's address bar.
- Scroll down to Answer with AI.
- Toggle the feature to off.
Bonus tip: there you may also disable anonymous usage metrics while you are at it.
Closing Words
Answers with AI worked surprisingly well during tests. While it is necessary to verify the output, as it is not guaranteed that the information is accurate, the same can be said for any third-party source of information on the Internet.
Granted, information published on trustworthy websites are usually correct, whereas the same cannot be said for the output of generative AI tools.
Webmasters may want to take note that the feature will likely reduce traffic coming from search engines in the long run. Then again, AI depends on human created information to function at all.
Do you use Brave Search? What is your take on AI responses to user queries in search engines?
it has and it is stoling your info from all of your pc hard drive it is called theft
I am trying to suppress the Brave Summary and am having problems. After I toggle off answer with AI my inquiries do not have the summary. After I log out, and log in again, I have to repeat the whole procedure as it is not saved. What can I do make this happen permanently?
Big brother Brave knows what is best for you.
It’s a pity. I liked their summariser which gave links to relevant articles with context.
You all don’t realize that AI goes on behind the scenes of a search engine since day 1? It’s just more focused and advanced, and available to the public. Paranoia doesn’t help you.
Realize a lot about how “AI” functions and have worked on a number of NER, Sentiment Analysis and other NLP processing projects. Wrote my first double pass hopfield network when I was 19 and have even worked with AI systems that are curently used to help detect insider trading.
It’s also why I will never use one personally and will actively avoid any products that have AI embedded outside of a research environment.
I respectfully suggest that what you consider paranoia might just be considered prudence. Many, many AI researchers have been warning about the current widespread, patently irresponsible adoption and how dangerous it actually is.
For just one scenario, take a look at the “Search Engine Manipulation Effect” paper by Epstein and Robertson. Then consider the “Humans rely more an algorithms” by Bogert, Watson and Schecter.
Take what you read, add in some extra NLP goodness with dark marketing patterns all controlled by big tech corporations in bed with govt “public-private partnerships” and see how comfortable you really are calling it paranoia…
@nonya yep savy words!
and now microsoft is telling people of the dangers of ai so i say shut it down for the good of the world
The biggest danger from this over hyped “AI” is that it’s not even Artificial Intelligence. It’s just a machine learning algorithm and is more like Automated Ignorance. Real AI will never be a thing, it’s an impossibility because we don’t even know how the human brain works yet. But these Automated Ignorance algorithms will be implemented everywhere and it will kill people because of wrong info, violate privacy and it will steal people’s work. That is the danger.
You’re way too late. It’s introduced to the world, so even if it was removed, the bad people still will have it.
I for one like the AI features in a search engine.
I tested it with a question about fishing rods for beach fishing, specifically to match to a particular fishing reel. It answered with an appropriate length range then went on to suggest three far shorter boat rods. The response could have been covert advertising (mentioned brand and model, but no details). Whether advertising or not, overall advice was incredibly misleading.
Disable it, folks!
One of the main problems when it comes to AI is verification. AI relies on third-party information when it comes to “hard facts”. It cannot just make something up when you ask it about fishing rods or how to do something on your devices. This information comes from somewhere, and it may be wrong or outdated.
So, I went back and tried again. This time asking for a suitable rod to cast a 60g lure from a beach (the result for 40g was well wide of what I would recommend, based on actual experience). The result was a summary of the fist website. There’s a lot of ‘artificial’ and not a lot of ‘intelligence’ in that.
They do make things up, it’s just a mathematical model.
ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/06/ai-chatgpt-guardian-technology-risks-fake-article
“…The reporter couldn’t remember writing the specific piece, but the headline certainly sounded like something they would have written. It was a subject they were identified with and had a record of covering. Worried that there may have been some mistake at our end, they asked colleagues to go back through our systems to track it down. Despite the detailed records we keep of all our content, and especially around deletions or legal issues, they could find no trace of its existence.
Why? Because it had never been written.
Luckily the researcher had told us that they had carried out their research using ChatGPT. In response to being asked about articles on this subject, the AI had simply made some up. Its fluency, and the vast training data it is built on, meant that the existence of the invented piece even seemed believable to the person who absolutely hadn’t written it.”
I know that they may hallucinate. I just wanted to say that the info may not be correct, even if they just use a source from the Internet. Say, an outdated guide about something.
I’m sorry but that’s wrong, LLM hallucinations are a well documented phenomenon especially in smaller models. Surely you’ve experienced having to nudge and push in the right direction even when you’ve worded the initial prompt right.
Yes they’re amazing but they’re not infallible and all knowing like companies and the media wants you to think.
You can use uBlock or Adguard or Brave browser’s adblocker to set cookies and local storage items already… seems like you are just complicating things.
this comment was meant to “Tom Hawack” and his over complicated tampermonkey script, especially when we talk about mobile… like Brave, doesn’t support extensions but has a good adblocker with uBo scritplets support.
In the end, both implementations have the same limitations, if a cookie has ‘httpOnly’ property enabled, only adding them as a header can work.
If you want to use your adblocker, only use
brave.com##+js(trusted-set-cookie-reload, summarizer, 0)
brave.com##+js(trusted-set-cookie-reload, codellm, 0)
and done.
you could also do it as ##+js(trusted-set-cookie, summarizer, 0, , , reload, 1) but there is a reason why Gorhill made the reload specific one.
So you don’t need to use tampermonkey or anything to set this up and just your probably already installed adblocker.
@Anonymous, I don’t think the script I shared is complicated, and it is, by the way, referenced/built with ViolentMonkey, not TamperMonkey which is excessively tied to Google …
But indeed it is definitely possible and arguably easier to have an ad-blocker do the job. If ‘uBlock Origin’ is the ad-blocker, setting filters to include LocalStorage is well explained here :
[https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/issues/2669#issuecomment-1792962901]
[https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/issues/2669#issuecomment-1793046537]
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Resources-Library#set-local-storage-itemjs-]
Personally a simple script that handles very simply both cookies and LocalStorage seems to me as pertinent, and clear to read, especially when many cookies and/or LocalStorage items are included.
Don’t forget that Brave Search settings are for some within cookies, for others in LocalStorage : my script handles both :)
A world of Nope. Tying a search engine into the browser guts itself is what I expect from Microsoft or Google not a browser that hypes privacy.
That aside, when I search for something I want correct answers to what I actually meant. AI is not even close to as good as I am at filtering that. Instant mediocrity is not a viable replacement for fast intelligence.
Also, I very much do not want my address bar suddenly starting to send everything I type into it to *anyone* for quicker predictive results. What I put in there is entirely between me and my DNS provider, which is also me.
That’s pretty far fetched. Ridiculous even. I’m 100% certain this browser does not care about privacy. I am 100% certain this browser is powered by Google and establishment rino capitalists that seem to think “pseudo privacy ” is a smart angle to use on software. Enjoy your “bound to fail” joke of a project.
‘…Each AI-generated response has a disclaimer that asks users to “verify critical facts”.’
Good invention they have here. So users do a search – which now uses lots more energy to perform and is more expensive. Then as AI has no actual intelligence, it will often make stuff up that is not factual. Therefore, users also need to carry out additional normal searches and find known reputable sites to determine which parts were factual and which parts were bullsh*t.
AI is the biggest con since psychic readings.
Asking users to “verify results” sounds good on paper however, psychological studies have shown quite conclusively that very, very few people ever do.
The computer spits out some information and we as a species are way too prone to accept whatever is presented. This propensity is already causing serious issues in medical treatment and scientific research ( see: “Understanding Human Over-Reliance On Technology” – Grissinger, “Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research” – Messeri & Crockett)
Using AI systems for information search is akin to placing a good bottle of scotch on an alcoholic’s desk with a sign on it that says “use at your own risk” knowing full well what the result will be… completely unethical and cruel.
As mentioned, a con of epic proportions.
I use 12 search engines among which Brave Search, set as :
Answers with AI = disabled
Anonymous usage metrics = disabled
Be noted that the Anonymous usage metrics pref is located in user’s LocalStorage.
Given I don’t keep any cookies/LocalStorage, given I use here on Firefox the ‘Temporary Containers” extension but not the ‘Firefox Multi-Account Containers’ which allows per-site cookies/LocalStorage per dedicated container, for the very few site settings I wish not to repeat at each visit, I create then a userscript with Violent Monkey which loads on chosen Website opening.
For instance, given Brave Search is concerned here, and for those whom may be interested, the script is :
// ==UserScript==
// @name COOKIES&LOCALSTORAGE-Search.brave.com
// @description Cookies and LocalStorage Settings for search.brave.com
// @version 1.0
// @author ME
// @namespace Violentmonkey Scripts
// @match *://search.brave.com/*
// @grant none
// @noframes
// ==/UserScript==
“use strict”;
var c = document.cookie
// If there’s no ‘setBrave’ cookie, then create one and create settings cookies and LocalStorage
if(!c || !c.match(“^setBrave=|; ?setBrave=”)) {
document.cookie = “setBrave=1; path=/”;
document.cookie = “olnt=1; path=/”;
document.cookie = “country=all; path=/”;
document.cookie = “safesearch=off; path=/”;
document.cookie = “useLocation=0; path=/”;
document.cookie = “useDiscussions=0; path=/”;
document.cookie = “summarizer=0; path=/”;
document.cookie = “codellm=0; path=/”;
document.cookie = “theme=dark; path=/”;
document.cookie = “units=metric; path=/”;
localStorage.setItem(‘app.usageMetricsOptOut’, ‘true’);
window.location.reload();
}
————————————————————————–
Works perfectly, all is wiped when exiting the site (‘Temporary Containers’ extension’). Handy, no fuss.
Such dedicated scripts for another 12 Websites (cookies and or LocalSorage). That’s the way I conceive cookies and LocalStorage : on my disk when I visit the site, off my disk when I exit the site.