Brave Launches Privacy-Focused “Ask Brave” Fusion of AI Chat and Web Search

Brave Software has unveiled Ask Brave, a new tool that unifies traditional search and AI-powered chat into a single interface, offering users contextual answers grounded in real-time web data.

The feature is now live on search.brave.com and available across all browsers and platforms at no cost.

The launch of Ask Brave marks a significant evolution from Brave’s earlier AI integration, known as AI Answers (formerly “Answer with AI”), which has been delivering over 15 million AI-generated responses daily since its debut in March 2023. With Ask Brave, Brave aims to bridge the gap between conventional search engines, often limited to a list of links, and AI chat tools that sometimes lack actionable depth or source grounding.

According to Brave’s Chief of Search, Josep M. Pujol, the new feature builds on the user engagement seen with AI Answers and reflects the growing demand for AI integration that maintains both accuracy and privacy. Ask Brave not only generates more comprehensive responses but also incorporates Deep Research, a feature designed to deliver in-depth, multi-source overviews, particularly useful for complex or exploratory queries.

Brave, known for its privacy-first browser with over 97 million monthly active users, also operates the world’s third-largest independent search engine. Its search index spans more than 35 billion webpages, handling over 1.5 billion queries each month. Brave Search distinguishes itself by maintaining a “junk-free” index and avoiding the use of user data for advertising or model training purposes.

Unlike standalone AI chat tools that often operate on static datasets and may produce hallucinated results, Ask Brave is deeply rooted in Brave’s real-time search infrastructure. It uses an advanced grounding technique that references live, relevant search results, achieving 94.9% factual accuracy on the SimpleQA benchmark. This ensures that answers are not only accurate but also accompanied by supporting content, such as videos, products, or articles, directly sourced from the web.

Users can engage with Ask Brave in several ways:

• Add “??” to a query to trigger the feature directly from the search bar.
• Click the “Ask” button on the Brave Search homepage.
• Use the “Ask” tab on the search results page (SERP) to switch to chat mode.

While AI Answers continues to serve up quick, one-shot summaries, Ask Brave opens the door to extended, chat-based exploration. For example, a user searching for “best mirrorless cameras for wildlife photography??” might receive not only a list of options but also contextual follow-ups, embedded videos, and product links, all tailored to their intent.

True to Brave’s ethos, Ask Brave maintains strict privacy protections. Conversations are ephemeral, encrypted, and automatically deleted after 24 hours of inactivity. No IP addresses are retained, and no user data is used to train AI models, an important distinction in an era where many AI services monetize user interactions.

For developers and organizations, Brave also offers a Search API, allowing integration of real-time web data into AI tools and applications. This has made Brave Search the real-time data provider for several large-scale LLMs, enabling dynamic, web-aware AI agents.