Proton's privacy-focused AI chatbot Lumo gets an upgrade with image recognition and generation
Proton has released Lumo 2.0, an update to its public AI chatbot that adds image processing capabilities, faster performance, and user-controlled persistent memory.
Proton, the company known for its privacy-focused productivity apps, has updated its public AI chatbot Lumo. The Lumo 2.0 version, launched on Tuesday, introduces several new features, including image recognition and generation capabilities.
Image Handling and Creation
Users can now upload pictures into Lumo and use the chatbot to analyze or edit them. Similar to other large language models, Lumo can also generate images based on a user's text prompt.
Enhanced Project Features
Lumo 2.0 also expands the capabilities of Projects, a widget that allows users to upload documents and work across Proton's other products like email and cloud storage. Projects now come with user-controlled persistent memory, enabling Lumo to recall user preferences across various conversational sessions.
Speed and Thinking Mode
The company says Lumo 2.0 is significantly more powerful than its previous version. It responds to most queries up to 76 percent faster. A new “thinking mode” has been added for more complex problems or questions.
Proton Founder and CEO Andy Yen stated that Lumo 2.0 has been re-engineered from the ground up and that the introduction of thinking mode gives it powerful new capabilities. He emphasized that Lumo 2.0 demonstrates users no longer need to choose between powerful AI and meaningful privacy protections.
Privacy as a Differentiator
The public version of Lumo appears roughly equivalent to other major chatbots in terms of usefulness. It answers questions in a similar format as Gemini and ChatGPT, with approximately the same level of detail and context. However, Proton distinguishes Lumo with its privacy protections. It uses zero-access encryption architecture, which encrypts user data in transit and at rest, allowing access only to the user. The company also claims that no server-side logging of sessions is retained, so nobody at Proton can see the contents of conversations. Proton also promises to never use customer data for AI training or share it with third parties.
Availability
Lumo 2.0 is available immediately. In addition to the free public version, Proton offers paid tiers (Plus and Professional) that give users significantly more access and resources.
