Mitja Rutnik / Android Authority
AI is becoming more and more ingrained in our society, and that trend will only continue. I’ve been using ChatGPT and Gemini ever since they launched, and honestly, I can’t imagine my workday without them. I also use them for personal projects, which means I’ve shared a fair bit of highly private information with these chatbots.
This brings up the crucial question of privacy. Are you truly comfortable sharing your most intimate thoughts and ideas with a chatbot that will use your data for training? While some people don’t care, a growing number certainly do. Proton is aware of this, which is why they recently announced Lumo — a privacy-first AI chatbot.
But is Lumo any good, and should you consider making the switch? Let’s dive in and find out.
How much do you care about privacy when it comes to AI chatbots? 0 votes Very — I don't want my data being used for training. NaN % I care, but not enough to opt out of AI training. NaN % I'm aware of possible privacy issues but don't care about them. NaN % I honestly haven't thought about it much. NaN %
First things first: What makes Lumo different?
Before we get to the hands-on part of the post, it’s important to understand what truly sets Lumo apart from rivals like ChatGPT and Gemini. The company behind it, Proton, makes a bold claim: Lumo is totally private right out of the box. This means your data will never be used to train the AI. Furthermore, all your chats are encrypted and deleted, ensuring no one but you can read them. This also guarantees your data won’t be shared with anyone for advertising or other purposes.
Proton also emphasizes that it’s based in Europe, which boasts stricter privacy laws than many other regions. Additionally, Lumo is built upon open-source language models. This means it’s not in a partnership with OpenAI (which runs ChatGPT) or any other multi-billion-dollar American or Chinese corporation.
This is a stark contrast when compared to the likes of ChatGPT or Gemini. Both of these services will store your chats by default, use them to train their AI models, and may even assign actual humans to read them in hopes of improving the service overall. A bit scary when you think about it, but there are ways of mitigating this, which I’ll discuss a bit later.
So, is Lumo any good?
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