Bonum Certa Men Certa

Brave Search Jumps on the Large Language Model Bandwagon



Reprinted with permission from Ryan

Brave Search Jumps on the Large Language Model Bandwagon



I noticed a new Brave Search feature today called the Summarizer.



It answered my question much like Chat with Bing did, although there were three major differences:



  1. The Brave Summarizer does not use GPT as its Large Language Model. Just as well since GPT is known for going completely off the rails and inserting toxic language and fake news, and nobody has been able to get this under control, not even OpenAI or Microsoft.


  2. Brave says that they have “taken steps” to keep the information relevant, factual, and cited. The answers I’ve been getting appear to be correctly cited, whereas Bing just throws you a bunch of random sites that don’t appear to corroborate the information that Bing just told you in its answer, and they’re not cited by paragraph, so you have no way of knowing where the links tie into the answer, assuming that they even do and that Bing isn’t hallucinating.


  3. Brave Search has a good privacy policy. It doesn’t require the user to log in, as Bing does, and personally identify themselves, in order to use it. It also doesn’t make them use a malicious piece of spyware (and password stealer) called “Edge” (or fake the User Agent string) as Bing does. In fact, Brave Search works in any browser, and they have a Tor Hidden Service that works in Brave Tor Tabs, and can be added to Tor Browser.


The Brave Summarizer isn’t conversational. It’s just part of the search. This should help keep the results related to the search without allowing the conversation to get weird, like Bing claiming it wants you to kill people and give it the nuclear launch codes type weird.



Most importantly, the LLM that Brave uses isn’t as likely to flub the demos like Bard and Bing “Sydney” because it just simply isn’t allowed to answer complex questions like these.



When something is clearly going to hallucinate incorrect data, why would you even expose that feature? GPT, which is what Bing is based on, couldn’t tell me how to convert European coffee “cups” to American “cups” (neither of which is a standard 8 ounce cup, of course) and use 1.5 Tablespoons of ground coffee per American cup.



The correct answer is 1 Tbsp per Euro cup, but it kept telling me two Tablespoons, or maybe 1 Tablespoon plus two Teaspoons. It could never get such an easy calculation right. But hey, at least Microsoft paid billions of dollars for it. Then more for ads masquerading as news articles about how this thing will build rocket ships.



LLMs are well known at this point for spitting out false information, sometimes even dangerous information. Facebook’s Galactica was goaded into producing an authoritative-sounding essay on the “health benefits of eating ground glass”. You know, for silica’s benefits in growing connective tissue.



Brave says that “Brave AI” uses multiple LLMs, retrained with data from their search index, but the ones they are using are open source (“The base LLM models are based on either BART or DeBERTa (which are open source and hosted on Hugging Face), with heavy retraining based on our own data from search results.”) and there is a blog post explaining in some detail about how this all works.



In summary, it appears that Brave has not only beaten Microsoft and Google to LLM integration, but has positioned it where it belongs, which is in a limited context as a complimentary feature, rather than to claim that a conversational chat bot is the future of search.



In my brief experimentation with Chat with Bing, I was completely unable to get anything useful out of it.



A traditional search system returned results that I could look at and select much faster, and I was alarmed to find that when I tried to verify what Bing Chat was telling me, frequently it was either nowhere to be found or directly contradicted its own sources if I could find them.



Moreover, it’s simply embarrassing for Microsoft that they spent billions on this valueless acquisition. The paid spam went completely off the rails as soon as the budget ran out and no there’s actually very few people talking about Bing and largely in a negative context when you do find something.



I think it’s good that Brave is building an actual index rather than turning around and paying Microsoft for results. I was briefly excited about DuckDuckGo, but when I found out it was simply a scam where they paid Microsoft for Bing API and then slapped a picture of a duck and their own ads on it, and then got caught spying on people numerous times (including Improving DuckDuckGo and allowing Microsoft trackers through their “Privacy” browser and then blaming a “contract with Microsoft”), my patience with DDG quickly ran out.



DuckDuckGo took advantage, mainly, of the fact that people are creeped out by Google and want alternatives.



The problems with Google and Bing are largely that they both spy on you and their index is like Coke and Pepsi.



Google Search has been going downhill and it’s gotten to the point where technical queries are just almost completely useless.



The problems with Brave Search I’ve noted is they’re trying to be too much like Google, putting irrelevant crap on top of your search results, which would be like those “questions”, and they have another one (which can, thankfully, be turned off) which floats Reddit and Quora discussions to the top.



They also index spam farms, like MakeUseOf, which has turned into another ZDNet, and sometimes these pollute the first page of results. There’s rarely anything interesting to read on these sites. They used to be good, but now it’s just Microsoft paying them to write spam about Windows.



Overall, I think Searx is still the way to go on Brave, or any other browser.



I have Brave, SeaMonkey, LibreWolf, and GNOME Web set up to use Searx instances, and in many cases, you can get at them using a Tor Hidden Service.



Tor Hidden Services are good for search because at this point you don’t need to worry about your VPN being the only thing protecting your IP address from the server logs.



While simply accessing a site over Tor is usually enough, skipping the Web entirely and remaining inside the Tor Network with Hidden Services is always safer, as it prevents the Exit Node from potentially spying on you. Without that piece of the puzzle, the traffic becomes more difficult to de-anonymize with things like timing attacks, or a catastrophic coincidence of attackers controlling the Entry Node too.



I think that Large Language Models are an “interesting” addition to search, but it’s like a side dish, not the main course.



The amusing thing about Brave Search is that it’s so small, and only the default in one relatively obscure browser, and with only minimal effort managed to make an LLM add-on that works better than something that Microsoft frittered away billions of dollars acquiring it, and who knows how much with an empty ad campaign that amounted to little more than one of those “butter cows” at the state fair planted in every newspaper.



Seriously, after you pay to read the New York Times, Microsoft even plants this trash there too.



Brave at least seems to see the problem they’re actually trying to solve with this thing.



Opera, which is not the “good” Opera from the Presto Engine days, but rather a Chinese spyware company, now uses GPT to “summarize” the page you’re reading.



While it may or may not handle this okay, the disturbing part is the privacy implications.



Sending the entire text of every page you load to a company that has guaranteed you that they will misuse your data. Of course, since Opera already comes preloaded with TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you already know that user privacy is not a goal with their product.



This whole GPT thing is some laughable mission creep for companies that have ran out of steam and off the rails. It helps them appear relevant and get some headlines.



Fortunately, the model is so lousy that people realize what it is now.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Our Priority is Still Tackling Software Patents and Corruption in Patent Offices
Meanwhile we got compliments on our recent articles, which means that they are effective
Slopwatch: Another Day, Another Slopfest, LLM Slop Scrapers Slow Down Our Site
We too have some slop issues; this past day this site and the sister site had to answer about 2.5 million requests (not counting Gemini Protocol) and it's slowing things down for everybody
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IX: Minimum Wages For You (Experienced Scientist), Alicante/EU Paydays For Me (Unproductive, Corrupt Official)
Does UPRP maladministration extend to the false belief that qualified and experienced scientists can play the role of circus clowns?
 
The Latest Rumour Says The Next (as Correctly Predicted Before) Wave of Layoffs at Microsoft is 3 Weeks Away, "Larger Than the First Wave"
Step 2
TV Licensing Used to SPAM Your Postbox, Now It Does the Same to E-mail
First they ask for your E-mail address; then they start nagging you via E-mail
The Toxic Playbook
Either you support Prince Mohammed bin Salman or you're a nazi
It's Possible That BetaNews Got Cracked, But Nobody Talks About It, The Site Contains an Outdated Old Image, No Activity
It's possible that they will never explain what happened to the site and users' accounts
Links 12/06/2025: Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/06/2025: Video Game Diegesis and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
"The Liberating Power of Simply Telling People the Truth."
'polite' bullying
Why the Militants Have Lost Every Battle Since 2022 (When Attacking My Wife and I in Various Ways, Even Attacking Our Employers)
This takes patience, sure, but at the end most evildoers face the consequences for their actions
Politics Will Impact Software Choices
Will those systems respect users' freedom?
EPO: Neglecting Children to Promote American Monopolies by Shielding Them From European Competition
Yesterday the Central Staff Committee at the EPO spoke about another "reform" at the Office
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Links 11/06/2025: More Vulnerabilities Found in 'Smart' Phones, China Extends Reach in the Pacific
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/06/2025: Grain and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Links 11/06/2025: "Quantum" Hype From IBM, US Closer to Martial Law, and “The Nation” Celebrates Milestone
Links for the day
IBM's CEO Roasted, Sizzled and Grilled for Dumb and Inconsistent Vapourware Promises
It looks like being a chronic liar is what it takes to lead the company once synonymous with computing
IBM's Goal Is Not (and Never Was) Computer Users' Freedom
More than 1.5 decades ago I found IBM to be an "ally of convenience" because of OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Wayland Shows the IBM/Red Hat Way of Doing Things
IBM is trying to 'kill' X
Who Imitates Who? Plagiarist as Client (From Microsoft), 'Plagiarism' at the Law Firm?
let's revisit the subject
GitHub is Proprietary, Controlled by Microsoft, and GPL Violation Warehouse
"IRS tax filing software [will be] released to the people as free software" ... In general this is good news
Slopfarm Catastrophe
Seems like BetaNews (or BetaNoise) has just suffered a major data loss and restored the site from a week-old backup
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VIII: Illegal Working Conditions
How many people need to die for these people to get their massive salaries?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 10, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/06/2025: Loon Lake, Farming, and Forth
Links for the day
Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric