It's safe to say that I'm a fan of Proton. The company offers some great privacy-focused products and its password manager is one of my favorite additions I've made to my most-used services.

When I saw that the company also offers an AI assistant, I was immediately curious about its capabilities. Unfortunately, I realized that it definitely needs a lot more work to compete with other tools.

What is Lumo AI?

An open-source AI assistant with encryption and privacy

While it's undeniable that AI assistants can be useful, they come with significant privacy concerns. Your data and conversations are often used to train models, while services can be vulnerable to data leaks and prompt injection.

However, Lumo AI aims to avoid many of these concerns by guaranteeing user privacy. The company does not have access to your files and chats, which are protected with zero-access encryption. Your data is also not used to train models.

Its code is open-source, which means it's open to scrutiny. You can use the tool without signing up for an account, however if you want to save chats, you will need to use your Proton account.

It also sets itself apart from some other AI tools by not using ads on its free tier. However, the free plan does have limits compared to the premium version.

As someone who is interested in trying out AI assistants for productivity, but who is more concerned with issues like privacy, Lumo seemed like the perfect solution for me.

Why Lumo AI's results were so disappointing

It promised no hallucinations, then immediately hallucinated

I first tried out Lumo AI on a whim one night while looking at Proton services on my smartphone. I started a guest chat with the AI assistant to get a quick overview of what it could do and what sets it apart from competitors.

One claim stood out: it promised no hallucinations when discussing Proton features. Hallucinations are an issue I encounter frequently across AI tools. In fact, I've noticed hallucinations getting worse and not better when it comes to certain assistants.

This attracted some skepticism from me, since even very source-dependent tools like NotebookLM can hallucinate. But I decided to go ahead and quiz it on some of its other features, figuring it would be the best source for this information.

However, when I asked about the limits of the free plan, it said it did not have web search functionality. But in that very same chat window, I had a web search toggle enabled. I asked the chatbot about this, and it eventually corrected itself and admitted that this was a hallucination.

I was able to replicate this again at a later date by asking whether the free plan has web search functionality. At other times, though, it could answer the question correctly.

Overall, the experience was disappointing since I was so excited to try out this chatbot. While I always double-check the information that chatbots provide, I also don't want to be misdirected about basic facts that the AI should be able to reference.

But does this mean the assistant is a complete waste of time?

There are other features worth looking at

It does show some promise

I didn't find Lumo AI helpful for performing web searches to find information on services and devices. To be fair to it, though, Google's AI Overviews also performed similarly for queries like how to set up a metered connection on my Honor smartphone. Both Lumo AI and Google referred to settings that are not available on my phone's OS.

However, Lumo AI does have some promising features. The one I'm most excited about is the ability to extract and summarize data from uploaded files. For example, I shared a spreadsheet I used for taxes that I had uploaded to Proton Drive. I then used prompts to extract items with certain terms and values and present them in a table.

This is the perfect type of use case for Lumo AI, since it preserves the privacy of your data while providing useful insights. All the data it extracted was also accurate and matched the data I had extracted earlier this year when doing my tax filing.

Lumo AI also has some interesting customization features, as well as the ability to create projects. Projects act as hubs for saved files and conversations. You can also use these projects to customize the way you would like the chatbot to respond. There are a few templates available so you can see how the feature works. For example, you can create a project for learning about a subject or setting up financial goals.

Despite the bumpy start, I still want to explore Lumo AI more

While my first impression of Lumo AI was not great, I'm giving the tool some grace and plan to explore some of its more interesting features. Of course, all of this will be accompanied by double-checking, which is essential when using any generative AI tool.

I am hopeful for the tool's future though. In a crowded AI space, there aren't enough privacy-focused options, so I welcome Lumo AI's presence.