Generative AI on Ecosia Search

Ecosia Search includes two generative AI features: AI Overviews and AI Chat. They are designed to help you explore complex questions, brainstorm ideas, or dig deeper into a topic. As always, we’re doing it our way: putting people and the planet first.

In this article you can find answers to common questions, how to control or disable AI features, and how we handle your privacy and the environment.

AI Overviews

Overview and Availability 

AI Overviews use generative AI to summarize the most relevant information from search results and link reliable sources above the Ecosia search results. The feature is powered by Staan through EUSP. It uses a Mistral small 3.2 model. 

Deactivate AI Overviews 

AI Overviews are activated on Ecosia by default. You can switch them off in your Ecosia search settings > AI Overviews > uncheck the box. 

Or directly in the feature 

AI Chat

Overview and Availability

AI Search is a conversational AI feature on Ecosia that delivers full-text answers to your questions instead of a search results page of links. It allows you to explore topics in more depth, get explanations, compare concepts, or generate ideas — all through a natural conversation.

Using AI Chat 

If available to you, you’ll find AI Chat as a separate option on Ecosia. It’s designed to assist when you need more than a quick link. 

You can access AI Chat when you start a new search on ecosia.org, from your navigation bar at the top of the page  or through your search results — Look for the star symbol.

Access AI Chat through based on your query 

Auto-routing is a feature that automatically directs your search from the standard Ecosia results page to Ecosia AI Chat. This happens when the system detects a query such as a complex question or a request for a detailed explanation that can be answered more effectively by an AI response than by a traditional list of links. If you do not want this, you can disable the feature the first time it is triggered.

AI Chat works like any other AI assistant: you can plan trips, organize your thoughts, and research a topic in a conversational format. It’s designed to give you clear, helpful answers and support deeper exploration of your questions.

What it cannot do:

• Generate videos
• Share conversations with other people
• Does not have a deep research mode

AI Chat Modes

Chat Modes allow you to customize how the AI processes your questions and delivers answers based on what you need.

To switch modes, simply click the "+" icon in the chat bar and select your preferred mode.

• Web Source Mode: This mode instructs the AI to pull information directly from the live web for all of your queries. It is ideal for researching current events, finding up-to-date facts, or gathering a wide range of online sources.
• Guided Learning Mode: Instead of just giving you a flat answer, this mode acts like a personal tutor. The AI will walk you through the learning process step-by-step, asking guiding questions, breaking down complex concepts, and helping you truly understand the topic.
• Think Longer Mode: This mode prompts the AI to take additional time to reason through your query before responding, resulting in more thorough and considered answers for complex or nuanced questions.

Enhanced AI Chat features with an Ecosia Account

We are progressively integrating AI Chat with Ecosia accounts to make the experience more consistent across devices, while maintaining strong privacy standards.

Depending on the current rollout stage, this means:

• If you’re signed in to an Ecosia account: You are able to use specific features of AI Chat to enhance the functionality such as:
  • AI Chat history
• If you are not signed in: You can still use AI Chat, but the experience may be more limited and less personalized.

Chat history

Chat history lets you  save your AI conversations. They are stored securely (encrypted in transit and at rest). Saving your chat history is optional:

• Opt in: Activate Chat history in your AI Search settings to save your chats.
• Opt out: You can turn off Chat history anytime in your AI Chat settings. When turned off, no new chats will be stored and any history you had previously saved will be permanently deleted.
• Control: You can request a copy of all your conversations or ask us to delete them. Please submit your request via privacy[at]ecosia.org

• Start a temporary chat by clicking the ghost icon at the top right of the AI Chat start page.
• Temporary chats don’t show up in your chat history or recent chats, on any device.
• What you say in a temporary chat isn’t used as context for your future chats.
• We don’t use temporary chats to improve our services, even if you’ve agreed to share your data with us.
• When you close the chat, refresh the page or leave it, the conversation is gone for good. You can’t get it back.

• You can only start a temporary chat from a new chat. You can’t turn an existing conversation into a temporary one.
• Temporary chats work just like regular chats. You can upload files, generate images and use all modes and tools. They also count towards your usage limits.
• Temporary chats, including any files you upload and images you generate, are kept on our servers for 1 day and then deleted automatically. Deletion can take up to another 24 hours. During that time, they’re only used for safety reasons and so the chat can work, like reading a document or image you’ve shared. No one else can access them.

File upload

The file upload feature lets you upload documents and images directly into your chat. You can ask the AI to summarize articles, analyze data, extract key information, or answer specific questions about the file’s content.

You can upload a variety of text, document, data, and image formats, including:

• Documents: PDF, TXT, DOCX
• Data/Spreadsheets: CSV, XLSX
• Images: JPG, PNG

To ensure optimal performance, the following limits apply:

• File Count: You can upload up to 5 files per conversation.
• File Size: The maximum size is 5 MB per file.

File content can only be used within the specific chat conversation where it was uploaded. If you start a new chat, you will need to upload the files again. Long-term storage. All uploaded files are permanently deleted from our systems within 7 days.

Image Generation

To generate an image prompt "Create an image of a tree" or select the item in the AI tools dropdown "Generate image" and describe what you would like to see.

Privacy and data storage

• Generated images are stored on European servers for up to 7 days, after which they are automatically and permanently deleted. Your prompt is not stored separately and is not used to train AI models. Images will stay in your chat history for those 7 days.
• Ecosia uses Black Forest Labs (BFL), a European AI provider operating from EU data centres, to generate images. BFL does not retain your data beyond what is needed to process and return the image, and does not use it for training purposes.
• The model training included a combination of legally web-scraped images, licensed or purchased third-party data, data created by contractors and vendors, synthetic data, and BFL usage data. This ensures that all images used for training were obtained with proper authorization
• Generated images include C2PA content credentials, which identify them as AI-generated in line with the EU AI Act.

Planned features for AI Chat

Deactivate AI Chat

Ecosia AI Chat is an optional feature to use but if you're not searching with it, you're not using it. Based on your search query you might be redirected to AI Chat because of the style of the query. This can be disabled the first time when it is triggered.

Other than this AI Chat runs separately from Ecosia’s regular search. The standard web search results on Ecosia Search are provided by our search partners.

Read on to find out how to get the Ecosia AI-free search experience

General AI Principles at Ecosia

We want AI on Ecosia to serve people and the planet, not the other way around. That means:

• Clear principles: We design AI features to align with our core values of privacy, climate impact, and user benefit.
• Safety and compliance: We implement safeguards and moderation, and we comply with GDPR, the EU AI Act, and other relevant regulations.
• Evidence‑based changes: We evaluate performance, environmental impact, and user feedback before rolling out major changes.

As AI technology and regulations evolve, we will keep updating this page and our policies to reflect how we use these technologies.

Environmental impact of AI Search

Ecosia AI runs on small models by design. We estimate the impact of our AI features per request using the EcoLogits methodology, which is based on Life Cycle Assessment, as defined in ISO 14044. It covers greenhouse gas emissions, raw material depletion, primary energy and water consumption for running the models, but not model training, networks or your device. We use this as estimates to inform our decision for further development of our AI services. 

Model, training and adjustments

We use a combination of open weight models, as well as Mistral, in order to strike a strong balance between performance and efficiency. By choosing smaller models, we aim to deliver a high-quality experience while keeping our energy and water footprint low. We believe there is a need for greater transparency around AI’s environmental impact and continue to push for change across the tech industry.

Given our business model (directing 100% of our profits toward climate action) we don’t have (and don’t want to divert) the vast funds required to train a new model from scratch. Beyond cost, training a bespoke model would also consume significantly more energy than using an existing, already-trained model.

As part of our development process, we’ve implemented safeguards and moderation systems, and carefully evaluated outputs to help ensure trustworthy and responsible results.

We're also continuously exploring alternative models.

For more information, please read our FAQs.

Privacy and data use

Ecosia’s approach to privacy remains the same with AI:

• We only collect the minimum data necessary to provide and improve our services.
• We do not run services like email, maps, or payment platforms, which means we have no way to build a personal profile of you across different platforms. That’s not our business, and it never will be.
• We do not sell your personal data.

As a European company, we:

• Operate under strict privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• Comply with the EU AI Act and carefully monitor new developments.

When you use AI Search:

• Ecosia forwards your chat requests to our external chat provider, Mistral.
• Your conversations are stored in your browser’s local storage for the chat interface and, if you opt in to save Chat history, on our servers in encrypted form.
• AI is not designed to handle sensitive data. We strongly recommend you never share personal, financial, health, or other sensitive information in the chat.

Accuracy, safety, and sensitive topics

Like all generative AI, Ecosia’s AI Search and AI Overviews can:

• Be factually wrong or outdated (“hallucinate” information)
• Be incomplete or biased
• Misinterpret your question or provide confusing answers

We have implemented safeguards and moderation systems, and carefully evaluate outputs to reduce harmful or misleading content, but we cannot guarantee perfection. We recommend double checking important information and encourage users to be aware of the limitations of generative AI. 

If you see harmful or clearly wrong content, please use the feedback controls in the interface or contact us via the Help Center so we can investigate.

Support 

Why don’t I see AI Chat or AI Overviews?

There are several reasons why you might not see AI features yet:

• Gradual rollout: AI Chat is a beta feature and is only available to some users so we can test and improve it before a wider launch.
• Region: AI features may not yet be available in your country or region.
• Platform or version: Older browsers, devices, or app versions may not fully support the feature.
• Privacy tools or extensions: Ad‑blockers, script‑blockers, or strict privacy extensions can sometimes interfere with the scripts needed to load AI features.
• Network environment: Corporate networks, VPNs, or strict firewalls can sometimes block AI services.

If AI Chat or AI Overviews are not available where you are, you can continue using Ecosia’s regular search as usual.

How to get an AI-free search experience?

You can activate an AI-free search experience in your Ecosia Settings. When AI-free search is activated, here's what changes:

• AI Overviews are disabled
• AI Chat is removed from navigation and autocomplete dropdown
• AI-based auto-routing is disabled
• The traditional Search Box replaces the omnibox

Troubleshooting issues with AI Chat

If AI Chat appears but isn’t working properly (e.g. slow loading, error messages, or empty responses), you can try:

1. Refreshing the page and retrying your query.
2. Turning off your extensions temporarily (ad‑blockers, script‑blockers, privacy tools) and reloading Ecosia to see if they were interfering.
3. Updating your browser to the latest version.
4. Using Ecosia AI Chat on a different browser or device to see if the issue is environment‑specific.
5. Checking your internet connection and VPN/proxy settings.

If problems persist, you can contact us via our Help Center and include:

• Your browser and operating system
• A brief description of what you were doing
• Screenshots of any error messages (if possible)

Give feedback or help improve AI Chat

AI Chat is currently only available to some users. We’re actively improving our AI features and value your input. You can:

• Use the feedback option directly inside AI Search or AI Overviews.
  • Answers and reports are reviewed by our team.

FAQs

How does Ecosia use AI models today?

We already use several models side by side, including Mistral and open-weight models. Different questions are best answered by different models. So we use various models for different types of queries, to give our users the best quality and as little bias as possible. We will keep this approach going forward.

Which models are you evaluating right now?

We regularly review our mix of models to see whether it still serves our users best. As part of this, we are looking at open-source models that we could host on our own servers, powered by renewable energy, and adapt ourselves. This is a continuous process.

Do you prefer European models?

For the protection of our users’ data, we prefer models hosted by European companies and within the jurisdiction of the EU outside Ireland. We want our users to stay outside the scope of the US Cloud Act and to benefit from strict European Data Protection laws. We also evaluate models on quantitative criteria like performance, energy efficiency, and the level of renewable energy used. These criteria apply to every model we consider, wherever it comes from.

What is an "open-weight" or “open-source” model?

An open-weight model is published openly, so anyone can download it, run it on their own hardware, inspect it and train it further. Once downloaded, it is just a file on our own servers. It has no connection to the company that first published it. Many European policymakers and advisers support this approach: build on strong open models instead of spending billions of euros and tons of carbon on training new ones from scratch.

Why would you consider models originally developed in China?

Some of the strongest open models today come from Chinese developers. Leading research institutions and universities in Europe, the US and around the world already host such models on their own servers. When a model is self-hosted, its original developer has no access to it, no influence over it and no business relationship with the user. 

What about data protection in open source models?

The self-hosting of open source models is the gold standard of data protection. The less companies are involved in the provision of our service, the less risk for data to leak. Also, any US supplier would fall under the US Cloud Act and have to provide all data to US agencies. Your questions and answers stay within our infrastructure as opposed to sending data for processing to the US, China, or other regions outside the EU.

What is the level of control over open source models?

A self-hosted open-weight model cannot "phone home". It is a set of numbers that our own software runs, and that software never contacts the original developer. Because the model is open, we, and independent researchers, can inspect and test it.

What about model bias?

We take this seriously for every model we use. Some models, including Chinese ones, have been shown to repeat state positions on sensitive topics. That is one reason we choose different models for different queries, test models on sensitive questions, and show sources so you can check facts.

Are the models you use energy efficient?

Energy efficiency and energy sourcing are two of the core criteria we look for in any model. We continuously screen the market and choose dedicated efficient models specifically for our tasks. If we host models ourselves, they run on servers powered by renewable energy.

Do I have to use AI on Ecosia?

No. Our AI features are completely optional. The Ecosia search engine and the Ecosia browser are always available, whether you use our AI features or not. You can switch off all Ecosia AI features in your settings any time.

What happens to my conversations?

We do not sell or share your chat data with third parties. We also do not use them for training models, since we do not train models ourselves. According to your personal preference, conversations are either deleted or stored to provide context for your follow up questions.