Latest news with #Proton
Android Authority
13 hours ago
- Android Authority
Proton's ChatGPT rival is prioritizing privacy with encrypted chats and zero logs
Tushar Mehta / Android Authority TL;DR The company behind Proton Mail and ProtonVPN has announced a new privacy-focused AI chatbot, called 'Lumo.' Chats with Lumo are claimed to be end-to-end encrypted and stored directly on your devices. It offers both free and paid tiers and is available on Android and iOS devices, as well as with a web interface. Proton, known for its eponymous VPN and mail client apps, is joining the rally of companies that have embraced artificial intelligence or AI. Earlier today, Proton announced its entry into the AI chatbot market, positioning itself against stalwarts like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft's Bing Chat, but with a different approach. Proton has claimed its Lumo AI chatbot abides by the same privacy code as the rest of its products. It states that the chatbot does not store any chats, which remain encrypted and are therefore only accessible on your devices. Queries to Lumo go through Proton's data centers in Europe and are immune to disclosure demands by law enforcement agencies in countries like the US. You can use the chatbot even without signing up for or logging into your existing Proton account. However, logging in will enable a history of your chats. But even then, these chats are stored locally on your device and do not sync across multiple devices. Proton says its privacy-first approach ensures that data is never used to train or refine AI models. It doesn't reveal the encryption standard but compares Lumo with other services, such as Proton Mail, which use OpenPGP with AES-256 or ChaCha20 for end-to-end network encryption. There is no information available about the underlying language models either, but the company says it utilizes open-source AI models built in Europe. It further denies any association with OpenAI or any American or Chinese AI company. Tushar Mehta / Android Authority Like other chatbots, Lumo can process text and voice-generated queries, source results directly from the web, write code, and summarize text-based file types such as PDF and DOC as input. However, it currently cannot handle media files, such as images or videos, meaning it can neither use them to augment input nor generate them. Proton Lumo is free to use, but the unpaid tier comes with restrictions, such as slower processing, daily limits, and caps on file size. There is another paid tier, called Lumo Plus, which unlocks unlimited chats, a longer chat history, and support for multiple uploads per query for €9.99 (~$11.70). Lumo is available on mobile for both Android and iOS, as well as through a web interface. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Engadget
14 hours ago
- Business
- Engadget
Proton's privacy-focused Lumo chatbot encrypts all your conversations
What's another AI chatbot in an already crowded field? That's the question Proton is trying to answer today with the release of its new Lumo assistant . And like with its best known service, Proton Mail , the company says Lumo is for those who want a private alternative to what big tech is offering. Proton says every conversation with Lumo is secured with zero-access encryption, meaning only your device can unlock your content. In the context of an AI chatbot, that has several implications. Most notably, it means not even Proton can view your chats. As a result, the company can't share your data with governments, advertisers or, for that matter, any other company, and it can't use your data to train future AI models. "By using Lumo, you can enjoy the benefits of an advanced AI assistant without the risk of your data being misused," says Proton. I briefly tried Lumo. It's a bit slow to generate a response, but you can broadly expect a similar experience to what you would find using ChatGPT or Claude for free. Lumo can search the web to answer questions beyond its knowledge cut-off date, but by default that feature is turned off to further protect user privacy. You can also upload files to Lumo. Here again Proton says the chatbot won't save any information. Proton isn't touting the performance of Lumo's large language models, but if you're curious about this sort of thing, it's powered by a handful of open-source systems, including Mistral NeMo and Mistral Small 3, among others. Proton told The Verge Lumo will filter requests through the model best suited for the task. For example, it will use NVIDIA's OpenHands system for coding requests. Lumo is free to use, with a weekly query limit. You don't need a Proton account to begin a conversation with the chatbot. In addition to being available on the web , Proton offers both Android and iOS apps. A $13 per month Plus plan offers unlimited usage, alongside perks like larger uploads, access to more advanced AI models, priority support and more. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Proton's new privacy-first AI assistant encrypts all chats, keeps no logs
Privacy-focused productivity tools maker Proton on Wednesday released its AI assistant, called Lumo, which it says prioritizes protecting user data. The company says the chatbot keeps no logs of your conversations, has end-to-end encryption for storing chats, and offers a ghost mode for conversations that disappear as soon as you close the window. Available via a web client, as well as Android and iOS apps, Lumo doesn't require you to have an account to use the chatbot and ask questions. You can upload files to have the chatbot answer questions about them, and if you have a Proton Drive account, you can connect it with Lumo to access files stored in the cloud. While the chatbot has access to the web, it might not find you the latest results if you use it to search. Proton seems intent on making it clear that its focus is on privacy. The company says Lumo is based on open-source models, and it will only depend on them for research and development going forward without utilizing user data to train its models. It also said Lumo relies on zero-access encryption, an encryption method that other Proton products also use, to let users store their conversation history, which can be decrypted on the device. Throughout its blog post about Lumo, Proton emphasized its European base, saying it gives the company a leg up over AI companies based in the U.S. and China when it comes to privacy. 'Lumo is based upon open-source language models and operates from Proton's European datacenters. This gives you much greater transparency into the way Lumo works than any other major AI assistant. Unlike Apple Intelligence and others, Lumo is not a partnership with OpenAI or other American or Chinese AI companies, and your queries are never sent to any third parties,' Proton said. This is not Proton's first foray into the fast-developing AI tools space: Last year, it rolled out an AI-powered writing assistant for its Mail product that also runs on the user's device. Sign in to access your portfolio
TechCrunch
16 hours ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Proton's new privacy-first AI assistant encrypts all chats, keeps no logs
Privacy-focused productivity tools maker Proton on Wednesday released its AI assistant, called Lumo, which it says prioritizes protecting user data. The company says the chatbot keeps no logs of your conversations, has end-to-end encryption for storing chats, and offers a ghost mode for conversations that disappear as soon as you close the window. Available via a web client, as well as Android and iOS apps, Lumo doesn't require you to have an account to use the chatbot and ask questions. You can upload files to have the chatbot answer questions about them, and if you have a Proton Drive account, you can connect it with Lumo to access files stored in the cloud. While the chatbot has access to the web, it might not find you the latest results if you use it to search. Image Credits: Screenshot by TechCrunch Proton seems intent on making it clear that its focus is on privacy. The company says Lumo is based on open-source models, and it will only depend on them for research and development going forward without utilizing user data to train its models. It also said Lumo relies on zero-access encryption, an encryption method that other Proton products also use, to let users store their conversation history, which can be decrypted on the device. Throughout its blog post about Lumo, Proton emphasized its European base, saying it gives the company a leg up over AI companies based in the U.S. and China when it comes to privacy. Image credits: 'Lumo is based upon open-source language models and operates from Proton's European datacenters. This gives you much greater transparency into the way Lumo works than any other major AI assistant. Unlike Apple Intelligence and others, Lumo is not a partnership with OpenAI or other American or Chinese AI companies, and your queries are never sent to any third parties,' Proton said. This is not Proton's first foray into the fast-developing AI tools space: Last year, it rolled out an AI-powered writing assistant for its Mail product that also runs on the user's device.
Fast Company
19 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Proton's new Lumo AI is all about privacy
Proton is getting into generative AI with an assistant called Lumo, which it pitches as a more private alternative to ChatGPT. While Lumo will offer a similar chat-based interface with support for web search and file analysis, Proton says it won't store records of users' conversations or use them to train AI. Lumo is available for free on the web and mobile devices, with an optional $13-per-month or $120-per-year subscription for unlimited chats, extended chat history, and larger file uploads. Andy Yen, Proton's founder and CEO, says Lumo is a way for people to utilize AI assistants without having to worry about how their conversations could be used. 'I think it's critically important, given the amount of sensitive information that we are dumping into AI, that there be a private alternative,' Yen says. Why you might want Proton's private AI It's already possible to maintain some privacy while using major AI tools. ChatGPT, for instance, offers a setting to opt out of training OpenAI's models. It also provides a 'Temporary Chat' feature for conversations that don't appear in your chat history or affect what ChatGPT remembers about you. Google's Gemini also lets users opt out of model training through a Gemini Apps Activity setting. But those settings are not the default, and neglecting them effectively sends your data into a black box. Once your data's been fed to a model for training, it can be extremely difficult to remove, and some providers, including Google, will even show a subset of conversations to human reviewers without disclosing when that happens. ChatGPT also warns that its 'Temporary Chat' mode still stores conversations for up to 30 days for safety reasons. 'Before we created Lumo, I'd use ChatGPT sometimes,' Yen says. 'But then I'd feel really dirty after using it, because who the hell knows what Sam [Altman, OpenAI's CEO] is going to do with all my data?' Proton isn't the first company to offer a more private alternative. The privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo launched its own AI tool, last year, with a similar promise not to keep a record of users' conversations or use them for AI training. The difference is that DuckDuckGo has arrangements with major AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and it sends queries to their servers through a proxy that removes personal information. Those AI providers have promised not to use conversations for training purposes. Proton isn't involving major AI providers at all. Instead, Proton's Lumo AI uses a mix of open-source models that the company runs on its own servers. While conversations aren't end-to-end encrypted, Proton says it doesn't keep logs of users' chats, and conversations are decrypted only on users' devices. 'We're giving people a very clear guarantee of privacy in that your chat history is never going to be saved, logged, or even accessible to us, because it's encrypted in a way that we cannot actually decrypt it,' Yen says. And why you might not Proton's privacy-centric approach has trade-offs, both with its other products and with Lumo. With Proton Mail, the company can't offer server-based email search because it has no way of accessing users' email contents. Instead, Proton builds a local search index on each device where the Mail app is stored. I recently moved away from Proton Mail in large part because the search function was too unreliable. In the case of Proton's Lumo AI, its capabilities are already more limited than other assistants. It can't connect to other apps and services—though Yen says integrations with Proton's email service and document editor are possible—and it can't tailor its responses based on past conversations, akin to ChatGPT's ' Memory ' feature. Its mobile app offers voice input, but not a free-flowing voice conversation mode. Proton also hasn't disclosed which open-source models it's using, and they may not be on par with state-of-the-art models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Yen says he hasn't noticed any issues in his own use of Lumo, but acknowledges that some trade-offs are likely. 'If you want to do things in a privacy-first way, there are going to be sometimes compromises that have to be made,' he says. 'It's a new way of doing AI, new ground that we have to break.' What it means for Proton For Proton as an organization, a foray into generative AI could also make some users uneasy. Proton has always prided itself on running a sustainable business that doesn't rely on venture capital or public shareholders, and it now operates as a nonprofit. Generative AI, meanwhile, is famously a money pit, and like other AI providers, Proton will be offering Lumo access for free. More broadly, AI competes on some level with human creativity and employment, and it uses vast amounts of energy. Proton has already faced a backlash from some of its users after adding AI writing tools to its document editor, then invoked a similar backlash days later with a foray into cryptocurrency wallets. Yen's feeling is that AI represents the future of the web and isn't going away, so Proton should offer a private alternative. While Proton will likely lose money at the outset, that was also the case when it entered the VPN and email businesses. Yen believes the organization can operate AI efficiently and can always adjust what it offers for free if the losses pile up. 'We believe strongly that this is the right thing to do for the world at this moment, and we're going to pursue it even if it ends up costing us money,' Yen says. 'But of course we're not going to compromise Proton overall financially.'
