Ask Brave

Product Introduction

1. Ask Brave is a unified interface developed by Brave that integrates AI chat functionality with traditional web search capabilities. It allows users to receive comprehensive, contextually grounded answers while enabling follow-up questions within a single privacy-focused conversation. The product is accessible via the Brave Search homepage, results pages, or directly at search.brave.com/ask, and works on any browser or platform.
2. The core value of Ask Brave lies in eliminating the need to switch between conventional search engines and standalone AI chatbots. By merging these tools, it delivers AI-generated responses enriched with actionable web elements like videos, news articles, and product links, all while prioritizing user privacy through encrypted, ephemeral interactions.

Main Features

1. Ask Brave combines AI-generated answers with real-time web search results, leveraging Brave’s independent index of over 35 billion webpages to ground responses in verified information. This reduces hallucinations by constraining the AI to analyze only relevant, high-quality search results, ensuring factual accuracy. Users can toggle between quick summaries (via AI Answers) and in-depth responses (via Ask Brave) depending on their needs.
2. The Deep Research mode enables multi-step analysis by iteratively querying Brave’s search index, evaluating thousands of webpages, and synthesizing exhaustive overviews for complex topics. This feature achieves 94.9% accuracy on factual benchmarks like SimpleQA, making it ideal for research-intensive tasks requiring thoroughness over speed.
3. Privacy is enforced through end-to-end encryption for chats, ephemeral storage (conversations expire after 24 hours of inactivity), and no retention of IP addresses or personal data. Unlike many AI tools, Ask Brave does not use user interactions for model training, aligning with Brave’s strict no-logging policy.

Problems Solved

1. Ask Brave addresses the inefficiency of juggling separate platforms for search and AI chat, which often requires manual copy-pasting and context-switching. It streamlines workflows by providing a single interface where users can refine queries iteratively while accessing both AI summaries and traditional search results.
2. The product targets privacy-conscious users, researchers, and professionals who need accurate, real-time information without compromising data security. It is particularly valuable for those conducting exploratory queries, such as academic research or product comparisons, where follow-up questions are essential.
3. Typical use cases include resolving complex technical questions (e.g., debugging code), comparing products with up-to-date pricing and reviews, and exploring multi-faceted topics like climate change impacts, where Brave’s grounding in web data ensures answers reflect current consensus.

Unique Advantages

1. Unlike competitors that treat search and AI chat as separate products, Ask Brave natively integrates both functionalities, allowing users to pivot seamlessly between concise summaries and detailed explorations. This contrasts with platforms like Google’s SGE or Perplexity, which lack equivalent follow-up capabilities within a unified interface.
2. The Deep Research feature is innovative in its use of iterative querying and large-scale webpage analysis, a capability unique to Brave’s independent search infrastructure. This enables state-of-the-art factual accuracy, as the system cross-verifies information across multiple sources before generating responses.
3. Competitive advantages include Brave’s privacy-first architecture, independence from third-party search indexes (avoiding biases inherent in Google or Bing-based tools), and scalability—Brave Search already handles 1.5 billion monthly queries, ensuring robust performance for Ask Brave’s AI-driven demands.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How does Ask Brave ensure privacy compared to other AI chatbots?
   Ask Brave encrypts all conversations, does not store IP addresses, and deletes chats after 24 hours of inactivity. Unlike many AI services, it explicitly prohibits using user data for model training, adhering to Brave’s commitment to GDPR and CCPA compliance.

2. What distinguishes Ask Brave from Brave’s earlier AI Answers feature?
   AI Answers provide quick summaries for straightforward queries, while Ask Brave offers extended responses with follow-up options, Deep Research integration, and contextual enrichments like videos or shopping links. The latter is designed for complex, multi-step investigations.

3. Can I use Ask Brave without installing the Brave browser?
   Yes, Ask Brave is accessible on any browser via search.brave.com/ask. However, Brave browser users benefit from default integration, including direct querying via the address bar with a double question mark (??) suffix.