Proton launched Lumo — its privacy-focused chatbot constructed on open-source fashions — in mid-July, and, following an replace in August that addressed some early problems, I to find myself the usage of it extra frequently than ChatGPT or Claude. In an international the place web corporations have finished such a lot injury to our society, I am looking for extra moral equipment. But if the contest gives flashier options in change for the low worth of consumer information, does Proton significantly assume it may compete?
If Eamonn Maguire, Proton’s head of gadget studying, stocks my considerations, he does not display it all through the hour or so we chat over Zoom. If the rest, I begin to see why he believes Lumo has discovered a treasured area of interest.
Proton started paintings on Lumo final 12 months following the discharge of Scribe. The e-mail writing device was once the corporate’s first foray into AI. In step with Maguire, the reception to Scribe was once “higher than [Proton] idea it will be.” Quickly sufficient, other folks had been asking the corporate why the device wasn’t integrated of their Limitless subscription. Internally, Scribe additionally modified how Proton considered AI. Proton launched its mail consumer in 2014, nearly precisely 10 years after the debut of Gmail in 2004. Proton Force, in the meantime, arrived in 2020 or 8 years after Google Force. The corporate felt it could not be past due to chatbots too.
“We knew we had to transfer sooner in this as a result of it is going to be a large privateness drawback one day,” stated Maguire, pointing to the monetization arc of previous platforms like Gmail. After cornering the e-mail marketplace, Google grew to become to commercials and promoting consumer information to fund Gmail’s operations. It is a acquainted state of affairs, and one Maguire argues we are already seeing play out once more with AI chatbots, with Elon Musk lately telling advertisers that xAI would show subsidized responses along common content material from Grok. In different phrases, the enshitification of AI chatbots has already begun.
The rising energy of open-source fashions is among the causes Maguire believes Proton can compete towards the likes of OpenAI and Google. Open methods, specifically the ones popping out of China, might lag in the back of proprietary fashions in consumer adoption however they are starting to fit them in checking out benchmarks. As an example, Zhipu AI’s GLM-4.5 these days sits most sensible 10 general on LMArena. On the identical time, “the entire most sensible fashions are beginning to cluster in combination in benchmarks now,” Maguire says. Even accounting for probably the most questions of safety with Chinese language fashions “Total, open methods are competing, now not simply tailgating [closed models].”
Lumo employs a mix of smaller open-source fashions that require fewer sources to run — in particular Nemo, OpenHands 32B, OLMO 2 32B, and Mistral Small 3. Maguire argues Proton’s means lets in it to be nimble. That is vital for an organization that hasn’t raised mission capital investment, and must consider development a sustainable trade fashion from the beginning. “A large number of other folks assume they want the most productive fashion to get the most productive responses. However I believe it is been proven that you’ll get very succesful responses from fashions which might be smaller,” Maguire stated.
For customers, that still manner Proton can be offering Lumo for much less. Like maximum chatbots, elementary options are to be had free of charge, with the choice to take away fee and token limits thru a paid subscription. For Lumo, that prices $13 — lower than $20 per 30 days maximum AI corporations rate for his or her elementary paid plans, and considerably lower than the $200 tier lots of them have begun providing for just about limitless utilization in their fashions.
Maguire suggests serious about it this fashion: You might want to force a Components One automobile to the grocer, however that might be overkill. When you to find LLMs helpful for your workflow, there is a just right probability a state of the art fashion like OpenAI’s o3 is in a similar way overkill in your wishes. Except you are a researcher, you almost certainly do not want a gadget that may explanation why over many mins to take on a posh drawback.
In a similar way, if you are simply riding a sedan or crossover to finish errands, then what higher represents the group you reside in digitally than your electronic mail and, most likely, your cloud garage. Lumo positive aspects some get pleasure from being baked into that surroundings, in the similar method many AI corporations are making an attempt to layer their chatbots on most sensible of desktop and cellular running methods.
The opposite explanation why Maguire feels that Proton has a shot towards established chatbots is as a result of, on the finish of the day, they are all simply equipment — some higher supplied for sure duties than others. For instance, Anthropic’s Claude methods are nice at coding, however they do not be offering symbol technology. As platforms, chatbots additionally do not get pleasure from community results in reasonably the similar method (or every so often in any respect, relying on their consumer information coaching insurance policies) that social networks do.
It will have to come as no wonder then a minimum of one of the most AI giants is attempting to modify that. In April, The Verge reported that OpenAI was once checking out a model of ChatGPT that features a social feed to symbol technology. Whether or not customers need this sort of factor is still noticed, as gluing social parts to an unrelated product frequently fails (see: Google+). With out social options, possibly customers can have an more uncomplicated time leaping between those equipment, particularly as they turn out to be cluttered with commercials or have interaction in additional egregious privateness violations.
At this level in our dialog, I am nonetheless now not satisfied Lumo would possibly carve out a distinct segment for itself. I bring to mind Mozilla and its contemporary string of dangerous information, from layoffs affecting its advocacy crew to the shutdown of Pocket. Firefox is arguably a greater browser than Chrome, with privateness options like powerful anti-tracking constructed proper into the app. Alternatively, it has a fragment of the marketplace proportion.
There is additionally the AGI-sized elephant within the room. Within the pursuit of fashions that may fit or exceed human intelligence at maximum duties, AI corporations are engaged in a competition the place there can handiest be one winner, burning monumental sums of money to exceed human intelligence thru silicon and paying a king’s ransom to rent the highest minds within the box to succeed in that. In that context, what probability does a small participant like Proton stand?
As soon as once more, the circle of relatives sedan stands to overcome the sportscar, or most likely a spaceship to increase the metaphor. “In case your purpose is to assist other folks turn out to be extra productive and be informed higher, do you wish to have AGI? Most definitely now not,” stated Maguire. “We aren’t beneath the semblance that everybody goes to change from ChatGPT to Lumo. Our purpose is to give you the best possible ecosystem the place other folks can do probably the most quantity of items inside a privacy-preserving mantra.”
As of 2023, Proton Mail had 100 million customers. It is a a long way cry from the greater than 2 billion other folks the usage of Gmail, however I do not believe any person may convincingly argue Proton Mail is a failure. The corporate remains to be going sturdy, and now competing in an area other folks like Sam Altman would have you ever consider calls for one thousand billion greenbacks of funding. If Proton can end up AI does not want to be “the antithesis of privateness,” as Maguire believes it may, that may well be sufficient to name Lumo a good fortune too.
