DuckDuckGo Battles “AI Slop”: New Filter Lets You Hide AI-Generated Images in Search Results

Tired of the visual clutter generated by AI? DuckDuckGo is here to help. The developers have recently unveiled a new tool designed to cleanse search results. A feature called AI Images has been introduced into the browser—a filter that enables users to manually configure the visibility of images created by neural networks.

This new functionality is integrated into the dropdown filter menu and operates as a toggle switch, allowing users to decide whether to include or exclude generative content from their search results. The developers’ intention is clear: to combat the so-called “AI slop”—the deluge of low-quality or irrelevant imagery that has inundated the internet due to the proliferation of image generators.

To illustrate this feature, DuckDuckGo’s demonstration GIF used the query “baby peacock”—a choice that was far from arbitrary. Around a year ago, users began noticing that Google‘s image results for such searches were being rapidly overwhelmed with subpar AI-generated content.

At the core of the filter are manually curated and publicly available blocklists, such as those maintained by the uBlockOrigin project. These lists contain domains and hosting services known for predominantly distributing AI-generated media.

The developers emphasize that the solution is not infallible. Neural-generated images may still appear, especially if sourced from platforms not yet blacklisted. Nevertheless, even basic filtering yields a noticeable improvement, and more advanced selection tools are currently in active development.