Proton's New Lumo AI Chatbot Puts Privacy First With Its ChatGPT Alternative – PCMag
With Lumo, Proton says it will never use your data to train its AI or share that data with external sources, and promises to delete chat logs.
There’s new competition in the AI chatbot space, and this one is focused on privacy. Proton, the company behind services like Proton Mail and VPN, has now launched its first AI assistant.
The Lumo chatbot “keeps your conversations confidential and your data fully under your control — never shared, sold, or stolen,” Proton says.
The company cites the number of chatbot users who want to talk to services about confidential topics like health problems or complicated legal documents. Proton says Lumo will protect your data, even though its features are more limited than alternatives like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. There’s no image generation or voice-based search here, but Lumo can perform key tasks like searching the web, writing text, analyzing files, and more.
Lumo turns off all web access by default, but you can manually turn it on with a small button at the bottom of the prompt box. It’s easy to then toggle on and off depending on what you’re searching and how much data you’re willing to share online.
Other elements of Proton’s privacy promise include that it will never use your data to train its AI, that logs of your chats are deleted (and encrypted during the process), and that it won’t ever share your data with any external sources.
There’s also a feature called Ghost mode that allows you to have disappearing chats with Lumo. Use this in a similar way to an incognito mode when you don’t want the browser to follow what you’ve been doing. If you’re a Proton user already, you can also integrate the chatbot directly with its Drive tool to help it read your documents.
Proton Lumo is available on the web, Android, and iOS. The app is available now, and it’s free to use for up to 100 messages per month.
To get unlimited queries, you’ll need to sign up to Lumo Plus for $12.99 a month or $9.99 a month through an annual subscription. If you’re on a Proton Unlimited subscription, you won’t get access to Lumo Plus, and you’ll have to pay extra to access it. Those on Proton Visionary or Lifetime accounts get access to Lumo Plus without paying extra.
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I’ve written tech news for over a decade, and as a Reporter at PCMag, I cover the latest developments across the gadgets and services you use every day. Previously, I worked for Android Police, TechRadar, and more.
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