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
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.
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.
ChatGPT also warns that its “Temporary Chat” mode still stores conversations for up to 30 days for safety reasons.
Proton isn’t the first company to offer a more private alternative. The privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo launched its own AI tool, Duck.ai, last year.