TL;DR: Proton not too long ago launched Lumo, a brand new chatbot service designed with a give attention to confidentiality and safety. Billed as a “privacy-first” AI device, Lumo goals to ship the advantages of contemporary synthetic intelligence with out compromising person privateness or misusing private information. Whereas outcomes could fluctuate, Proton seems assured sufficient to place Lumo alongside established opponents within the AI market.
The thought behind Lumo is that whereas AI can present vital alternatives for customers and companies, it additionally introduces new dangers associated to non-public information assortment. In keeping with Proton, Large Tech is leveraging AI to speed up the surveillance-capitalism enterprise mannequin rooted in promoting. Firms are actually harvesting huge quantities of person information, usually with out clearly looking for consent.
Lumo goals to ship the advantages of AI with out demanding entry to non-public information. Like different chatbots, it may summarize delicate authorized paperwork, reply personal well being questions, or rewrite private emails. Nevertheless, Lumo incorporates a variety of safeguards particularly designed to guard person privateness.
Lumo shops no chat logs, would not share any information with third-party distributors or authorities companies, and would not exploit person data to coach new AI fashions. The chatbot can also be protected by zero-access encryption, an open-source know-how designed to forestall third events from accessing customers’ content material.
Lumo is constructed on a number of open-source AI fashions, together with European tasks developed by Mistral. Proton emphasizes that these fashions are operated from its European information facilities, which ought to improve transparency and scale back the chance of abuse by US or Chinese language AI firms. The Geneva-based firm compares Lumo to providers like Gemini, Copilot, and different industrial AI instruments, which it claims are centered on turning customers into sources of revenue.
Lumo additionally features a few productivity-focused options, permitting customers to add recordsdata or search the net. The search characteristic is disabled by default and is constructed round privacy-friendly engines. Lumo is obtainable without cost to each visitors utilizing the net model and customers of the official Android or iOS apps. A $13-per-month subscription can also be provided, unlocking further capabilities reminiscent of limitless chats, prolonged encrypted chat historical past, and extra.
We tried stress-testing Lumo with some controversial subjects and located that the chatbot is probably going designed to keep away from such interactions. This implies that whereas Proton’s service could defend your privateness, it nonetheless enforces content material restrictions much like these of extra conventional chatbots.
