Proton upgrades its Lumo chatbot with image tools and faster replies

In short: Proton has released Lumo 2.0, an updated version of its AI chatbot that adds image features, expands its document tool, and responds faster.

What happened

Proton, the company behind privacy focused apps like Proton Mail, has upgraded its public AI chatbot, Lumo. The new version is called Lumo 2.0, and it is available immediately.

The biggest new addition is image support. People can upload a picture and ask Lumo to analyze it or help edit it. Lumo can also create images from a written request, similar to other popular chatbots.

Lumo 2.0 also expands a feature Proton calls Projects. Projects lets people upload documents and work with them across Proton’s services, like email and cloud storage. Projects now includes “persistent memory,” which means Lumo can remember your preferences between chats (like a helpful assistant who keeps notes, but only for you).

Proton says Lumo 2.0 answers most questions up to 76 percent faster than the prior version. It also adds a “thinking mode” for harder questions, which is meant to take extra time to work through a problem.

Proton continues to position Lumo around privacy. The company says chats are encrypted “in transit and at rest,” meaning they are scrambled while being sent and while stored, like a locked message that stays locked. Proton also says it keeps no server-side logs of sessions, and it will not use customer data to train AI or share it with third parties.

Why it matters

Many people use chatbots for sensitive topics like work documents and personal questions. Lumo’s update is aimed at people who want common chatbot features, including image help, but are worried about who can see or reuse what they type.

Source: TechCrunch AI