What they saying in this post is that they are designing these LLM-based features to support search.

The post describes how their use-case is finding high quality sources relevant to a query and providing summaries with references/links to the user (not generating long-form "research reports")

FWIW, this aligns with what I've found ChatGPT useful for: a better Google, rather than a robotic writer.

If you look at my post history, I’m the last person to defend LLMs. That being said, I think LLMs are the next evolution in search. Not what OpenAI and Anthropic and xAI are working on - I think all the major models are moving further and further away from that with the “AI” stuff. But the core technology is an amazing way to search.

So I actually find it the perfect thing for Kagi to work with. If they can leverage LLMs to improve search, without getting distracted by the “AI” stuff, there’s tons of potential value,

Not saying that’s what this is… but if there’s any company I’d want playing with LLMs it’s probably Kagi

This is building on top of the existing core product, so the output is directly tied to the quality of their core search results being fed into the assistants. I overall really enjoy all of their A.I products, using their prompt assistant frequently for quick research tasks.

It does miss occasionally, or I feel like "that was a waste of tokens" due to a bad response or something, but overall I like supporting Kagi's current mission in the market of AI tools.

It's not -- this was posted literally yesterday as a position statement on the matter (see early paragraphs in OP):

https://blog.kagi.com/llms

Kagi is treating LLMs as potentially useful tools to be used with their deficiencies in mind, and with respect of user choices.

Also, we're explicitly fighting against slop:

https://blog.kagi.com/slopstop

Same, though in fairness as long as they don't force it on me (the way Google does) and as long as the real search results don't suffer because of a lack of love (which so far they haven't), then it's no skin off my back. I think LLMs are an abysmal tool for finding information, but as long as the actual search feature is working well then I don't care if an LLM option exists.