Proton Launches Lumo, a Private AI Chat Tool
Proton released Lumo, a free privacy-first, open-source AI chat tool with client-side encryption, no data logging, no data harvesting, and no account-creation necessary.
Written by Jackie Leavitt (Editor at Large)
Reviewed by Aleksander Hougen (Co-Chief Editor)
Last Updated:
Proton announced Lumo’s release as an antidote to Big Tech’s tendencies of “turning people into products — and using AI to accelerate the surveillance-capitalism business model built on advertising, data harvesting, and exploitation.”
Many large language models (LLMs) have used any data possible to train their models, including scraping any available content online, incorporating private databases, pirated books and even manually scanning copyrighted physical books into training systems.
In the effort to continue to improve LLMs, technology companies are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find new data, including the chats themselves. When users and businesses share private data in these chats, it creates significant privacy concerns.
“Today, hundreds of millions of ordinary people interact with AI tools, unwittingly handing over sensitive information that is far more intimate than search or browsing history. Businesses, too, are risking their secrets. And because alternatives for generative AI have so far been limited, we all have to take our chances with AI companies that are mostly owned and operated out of the US or China.”
Anyone can use Lumo without even creating an account. However, if you want to refer back to your previous chats, you’ll need to create a free account. Even then, all chats are client-side encrypted, meaning that Proton can’t see your unencrypted chat data. Lumo also includes “ghost mode” for Lumo users who want conversations to disappear once you close the chat.
By default, Lumo accesses its existing knowledge to answer questions, but you can select “web search” to have Lumo search the internet for new or more recent data. Like most other AI chat tools, Lumo also allows you to upload files, which it can analyze — but it doesn’t save records of those files. Proton users can also integrate with Proton Drive to add files to Lumo.
We spent some time testing Lumo without creating an account, and overall the results were fine, though some replies were flawed with understanding issues. It was also unable to answer some queries. However, results improved significantly when enabling web search.
Proton is an online privacy software company based in Switzerland that offers tools including Mail, Calendar, VPN, Pass (password manager), Drive cloud storage, Docs and Wallet (for Bitcoin transactions). If you want to learn more about the Proton security suite, you can read our various reviews: Proton Drive review, Proton VPN review, Proton Mail review.