Proton launches Lumo, a privacy-centric AI assistant

Proton, the company behind the encrypted email service Proton Mail, has launched a new privacy-focused AI chatbot named Lumo.

Proton's CEO and founder, Andy Yen, stated that the company's goal is to offer "AI that puts people ahead of profits," presenting a challenge to what he describes as the "surveillance capitalism" of Big Tech.

Lumo is engineered with multiple security features to safeguard user data. The AI assistant can perform tasks such as summarizing documents, writing code, and composing emails, with all data stored locally on the user's device.

Proton implements “zero-access” encryption, which gives you a unique encryption key to view your content.

This architecture prevents any third party, including Proton, from accessing your information, meaning your data is not available for sharing with advertisers, government entities, or for use in training large language models.

You can upload files for Lumo to analyze; the chatbot does not retain information from these files. Furthermore, when you link files from Proton Drive to Lumo, they maintain their end-to-end encryption during interaction with the chatbot.

The AI operates on a selection of open-source large language models running on Proton's servers in Europe, including Mistral’s Nemo, Mistral Small 3, Nvidia’s OpenHands 32B, and the Allen Institute for AI’s OLMO 2 32B model.

The system assigns tasks to the model best suited for the specific query. For instance, a Proton spokesperson noted, "programming-related questions are handled by OpenHands, which specializes in coding tasks".

Lumo also includes a web search function, which is disabled by default to prioritize user privacy. If you decide to activate this feature, Lumo utilizes "privacy-friendly" search engines to retrieve information from the internet.

Lumo is accessible via its website, lumo.proton.me, and through dedicated applications for iOS and Android. Access is structured into several tiers.

Individuals without a Lumo or Proton account can ask a "limited number" of questions weekly and will not have access to their chat histories.

Users with a free account can access an encrypted chat history, upload small files, and save a limited number of chats as favorites.

For a monthly fee of $12.99, the Lumo Plus plan provides unlimited chats, extended encrypted chat history, unlimited favorites, and the capacity to upload large files.