Proton AI never makes sense in the first place.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Not a single soul asked for it, waste of company resources.
This is how I feel. I’m not really okay with the money I pay getting used to develop ML and crypto BS.
Developing more slop AI but still no Linux drive client.
They need to fire their CEO and get an executive suite that can develop good products and not just copy Google while adding keywords related to "privacy" and "freedoms" in their marketing copytext.
That's the exact same thing as Google.
I say this as long time Proton user and subscriber.
Imo, having Proton just copy Google but actually be private is exactly what I want. Of course, if they stray away from privacy then there will be issues. I also feel like they are making good stuff. As a subscriber myself I don't have many issues with their offering other than the stuff they don't provide but Google does.
I don't believe they will be able to compete with Google/OpenAI in a direct battle by having a 1:1 LLM product copy but with privacy. The costs are likely too high for an organisation like Proton and their LLM is likely to have significantly subpar output.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for a private, cloud LLM, but I would rather they came up with novel usability features, a better front-end for evaluating sources (and faster identification of errors and hallucinations) and so on.
I am not seeing any of that.
I don't believe they will be able to compete with Google/OpenAI in a direct battle
I don't know about that. From my experience, community AI models (both image generation and LLMs) are often far, far superior to whatever large corporations can dish out within the same size bracket
Fair enough, I would also prefer if they pushed out an online excel/power point alternative before this or or allowed for more cloud storage.
That being said, I also don't think this is a bad thing to do. It seems to work alright so if they can at least be at that level then that's fantastic. I do wish they pooled their resources with other open source AI models cause that would be more efficient but maybe they have a good reason. I've just not looked into it cause I don't use AI that often
I use LLMs as a complement to search and Luma is far worse than even Le Chat from Mistral for moderately complex prompts.
Luma is also notable slower (to an unacceptable level).
I would they rather they focused on existing services. I use their email services and it's pretty good. Based on reviews, it seems that their cloud storage offering isn't on that level.
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I mean.... Why not?
I want Gmail without Google. Protonmail sells that to me, seems like a win/win.
Same for other services.
Lucky, they sell a way better solution than Gmail. Even changing the few accounts that used my Gmail caused 25% of the mails to not ever be received by Gmail.
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The difference is that Google scans your private correspondence and can report you to authorities for any reason, legit or not.
That's a fair argument. Although I personally wouldn't put too much emphasis on "can report you to authorities for any reason". That's true of any third party, your local mini-mart can report you to the authorities for any reason, legit or not.
I am referring more to the Lumo LLM initiative. It's a standard LLM pitch with some privacy copytext added on.
While I haven't tried Lumo, I do have experience with smaller cloud LLMs (e.g. Mistral, trying to not use American services) and they tend to be subpar for my work use cases.
I don't see how Lumo will compete with ChatGPT or Gemini (haven't tried Grok for obvious reasons).
Although I personally wouldn't put too much emphasis on "can report you to authorities for any reason"
They literally sent police after some poor dude based on their correspondence with a doctor
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/googles-scans-private-photos-led-false-accusations-child-abuse
Google does not have the authority to "send the police". They reported content that looked like CSAM and the police did what police do and assumed the guy was a criminal.
The problem is not that they reported it, the problem is that they had it in the first place.
Agreed, that's pretty fucked up.
However, on some level it's to be expected that 3rd parties may report you if they feel you are engaging illegal activities (especially on their premises).
While I don't support technological backdoors, there are legitimate for society to engage in surveillance. It's the responsibility of voters to make sure that this is done in a responsible and transparent manner.
Although I personally wouldn't put too much emphasis on "can report you to authorities for any reason". That's true of any third party
Not true of Proton.
I don't see how Lumo will compete with ChatGPT or Gemini
The same way it competes with all their other products; by making it private and open source.
Except that's exactly what we want. Google services that respect privacy and aren't full of ad cancer.
For those who didn't read the article
“If the proposals pass, Proton’s services in Switzerland would be less private than Google’s,” Mr Yen told Le Temps. Frustrated by the lack of assurances from Beat Jans, the federal councillor overseeing the matter, Proton has opted to halt Swiss investments and shift its infrastructure plans abroad. Its artificial-intelligence data centres, deemed especially sensitive, will be located in Germany and Norway and involve investing CHF 100 million.
how do I check what this said?
Ctrl+f
Good, fuck the swiss if they try to kill privacy, it was the only reason they got so much investment from the west.
Fair enough. The proposed VÜPF changes suck balls.
People here be acting like no one uses chatbots.
I like Lumo, be it only because I can use it instead of US or Chinese LLMs. Hope they help drive european AI development. And I'm quite sure Proton thought about their 1 billion investment a bit before announcing it.
You can refuse to use LLMs, but I doubt the use of AI will ever decrease again.
Mistral AI is another EU alternative for now. There is talk into it being sold, but for now it is still from Europe.
Their chat is still running in the datacenters of one of the three big us cloud providers, but at least the models are European for now.
How good is Mistral compared to say chatgpt?
I prefer the free version at least, it responds quicker and in my experience the quality of the responses is still decent.
I think Lumo is based on Mistral models
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