{"id":16129,"date":"2025-07-23T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/16129\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T14:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:20:07","slug":"proton-is-launching-a-privacy-focused-ai-chatbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/16129\/","title":{"rendered":"Proton is launching a privacy-focused AI chatbot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Proton, the company behind the encrypted email service Proton Mail, has launched an AI assistant<\/a> aimed at preserving user privacy. The new chatbot, called Lumo, can summarize documents, generate code, write emails, and more, while storing data locally on users\u2019 devices.<\/p>\n

Proton says it will protect this information using \u201czero-access\u201d encryption<\/a>, which grants users an encryption key that only they can use to view their content, preventing third parties, including Proton, from accessing the information. This helps ensure that Proton can\u2019t share user data with advertisers or governments, or use it for training large language models, Proton says.<\/p>\n

Though Lumo comes with the ability to search the web, Proton turns this feature off by default to \u201cgive users maximum privacy.\u201d If users enable the feature, Lumo will search the web for answers using \u201cprivacy-friendly\u201d search engines. Additionally, Proton says Lumo can analyze uploaded files, but it doesn\u2019t save any of its information. Users can link Proton Drive files to Lumo as well, which are supposed to stay end-to-end encrypted when interacting with the chatbot.<\/p>\n

Proton positions its AI chatbot as an alternative to the ones offered by larger companies, like OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, Meta AI, Google\u2019s Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. \u201cBig Tech is using AI to supercharge the collection of sensitive user data to accelerate the world\u2019s transition to surveillance capitalism,\u201d Andy Yen, the CEO and founder of Proton, says in the announcement. \u201cOur vision for Lumo is AI that puts people ahead of profits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lumo is powered by several open-source large language models that run on Proton\u2019s servers in Europe, including Mistral\u2019s Nemo, Mistral Small 3, Nvidia\u2019s OpenHands 32B, and the Allen Institute for AI\u2019s OLMO 2 32B model. The AI chatbot will field requests through different models depending on which is better-suited for the query. \u201cFor instance, programming-related questions are handled by OpenHands, which specializes in coding tasks,\u201d Proton spokesperson Betsy Jones tells The Verge.<\/p>\n

You can access Lumo now by heading to lumo.proton.me<\/a>, or downloading the Lumo app for iOS and Android. Users who don\u2019t have an account with Lumo or Proton can only ask the chatbot a \u201climited number\u201d of questions each week, and they won\u2019t be able to access their chat histories. Meanwhile, users with a free account can view an encrypted chat history, upload small files, and favorite a limited number of chats. There\u2019s also a $12.99-per-month Lumo Plus plan for access to unlimited chats, extended encrypted chat history, unlimited favorites, and the ability to upload large files.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Proton, the company behind the encrypted email service Proton Mail, has launched an AI assistant aimed at preserving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,44,2457,4206,1996,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-16129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-privacy","15":"tag-security","16":"tag-tech","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}