You can disable that. Here are two links that disable that. Add it to Firefox or Chromium through the settings.
Simple, only disables AI answers: https://duckduckgo.com/?kbe=0&q=%s
Long, disables AI answers and ads: https://duckduckgo.com/?kak=-1&kax=-1&kbe=0&k1=-1&q=%s
Steps to create a custom DDG search config:
- Visit: https://duckduckgo.com/settings
- Select the settings you want, for example dark mode.
- Click the “Show Bookmarklet and Settings Data” button.
- Copy the link, using my dark mode scenario would yield the URL
https://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d
- Edit the URL by adding
&q=%s
to the end, which acts as a placeholder for the browser to replace with your actual search query. Using my examplehttps://duckduckgo.com/?kae=d&q=%s
- Last step is add it to your browser. May differ between browsers, but generally look in the search engines tab of the settings.
VPNs are illegal in China.