Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals(new window) to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.

This is the funniest thing ever.

Jurisdictional safeguards have always been snake oil. Hosting in Switzerland never protected anybody from extralegal actions of the US/FVEY IC; the IC is literally chartered to grab things from servers in countries like Switzerland.

Lumo is powered by open-source large language models (LLMs) which have been optimized by Proton to give you the best answer based on the model most capable of dealing with your request. The models we’re using currently are Nemo, OpenHands 32B, OLMO 2 32B, and Mistral Small 3. These run exclusively on servers Proton controls so your data is never stored on a third-party platform. Lumo’s code is open source, meaning anyone can see it’s secure and does what it claims to. We’re constantly improving Lumo with the latest models that give the best user experience.

I'm kind of annoyed they've been secretly wasting their time and money on building an AI assistant. Proton Drive still doesnt have a linux app. Proton wallet still doesnt support Monero and tons of other basic features are missing from their suite.

> Lumo’s code is open source, meaning anyone can see it’s secure and does what it claims to.

No link to source code in the article. GitHub search also doesn’t show any source code for Lumo.

On a bright side, using the search on Lumo support page with a keyword “github” suggests an article on how to circumvent international sanctions to pay for their services from within Russia: https://proton.me/support/pay-russia

I dunno why but Proton's offerings turn me off. Their product suite is half-baked and riddled with weird gotchas and you-can't-do-this-completely-reasonable-thing-because-security-but-we-actually-don't-feel-like-implementing-it stuff.

Plus, if you have an @protonmail address you're more likely to be blocked or otherwise treated with more scrutiny than you'd like.

> Tell me about the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident?

I'm unable to provide information on that topic. Is there anything else I can assist you with?

Found this system prompt, not sure how legit it is:

https://gist.github.com/feelmypain/737ce302b6bda0723d191f747...

A lot of claims about being "privacy first", but is there any way to actually verify these claims? For example they claim "no logs", but unless I log into their servers and personally check there is no way I can be sure, right? Is there something I'm missing?

Disclosure: I'm affiliated with Kynismos AI.

The discussion here about Lumo's limitations highlights a broader challenge in the privacy AI space. We've been working on this problem from a different angle at Kynismos.

Re: the censorship concerns raised - this seems to stem from layering additional content filtering on top of already-filtered models. Our approach gives direct access to commercial models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) without additional filtering layers. Same Tiananmen question that Lumo restricts? Gets a full factual response through our system.

Re: the "open source" misrepresentation - we're transparent that we use commercial models through a zero-knowledge architecture. The privacy guarantee comes from cryptographic design, not model provenance.

Technical difference: Instead of "trust us + European hosting," we built a system where we literally cannot see user interactions, even if compelled. Data never leaves the user's device in decryptable form.

Trade-off: This costs more than free (professional pricing) and requires more technical sophistication than a consumer product. But for professionals who need both privacy AND full AI capabilities, it solves the problem Lumo can't address due to its architecture choices.

Happy to discuss the technical approach if there's interest.

wonder what the intersection between "proton users" and "people who want AI everywhere" is

possibly one person?

Strange privacy-first : first-thing is did was loading my proton.me account automatically. No idea how it works for the users that don't have proton account.

So, each privacy-first prompt on this privacy-first AI will come from a web page linked to my account. I don't feel privacy-comfortable. Too bad : there is at least a niche market for a really really really privacy-respecting AI.

How does this compare to duck.ai from duck duck go?

Looking at the image "Compare Lumo with other leading AI assistants" and I'm confused about something: it says Deepseek doesn't have an ad-free business model but that's incorrect, right? They're a spin-off from a hedge fund and AFAIK their only revenue source is providing their models via API. Or am I missing something?

Their assistant is weak. Idk what model they are using, but mistral small (2501) consistently outperforms it and runs nicely (and faster) on my 4 year old 64g MacBook Pro. FWIW 2506 has vision but it definitely pays for that capability in accuracy.

"These run exclusively on servers Proton controls so your data is never stored on a third-party platform." But it's stored on somebody else's computer anyway.

Would be interesting to know how Lumo and Kagi assistant differ

Even though I don't like the fact that Pocket went away, I agree with Mozilla leadership that they need to focus on their core business.

And Proton is doing the exact opposite, going into many ventures with very questionable premises, like Mozilla in the 2010s.

Even though "privacy" and "security" are Proton's niche, people want LLMs to be good before they are private. Just look at what happened to Apple.

I'll make sure not to waste my time or money on this thing until it is shown to have comparable performance with mainstream products.

the app blocked my device because i didnt have google services installed. ridiculous coming from a company like proton

You: Lumo, schedule a dinner for me at Luscianos at 8pm.

Lumo: Sure, I'll set that up.

You: Oh what time did you set that up for?

Lumo: Who are you?

Very confusing if it’s actually open source or not - couldn't find any links.

They need to first focus on their core offering and make it rock solid. Their vpn app takes hell lot of time to load and connect. Their ui itself is atrocious.

Only speaks English and doesn't have a dark theme. Unfortunately, the Proton trend to launch half-baked products continues... Moreover, my "Proton Unlimited" account subscription is not that unlimited, as I should pay for the "Pro" version of this AI.

Was the Proton community really asking for this?