Lumo by Proton

I was excited to hear about a privacy focused AI assistant from Proton. After some testing its limitations are clear. First, the upside: the UI is nice and very clean. The chat log and search are great. The downside is that Lumo is not nearly as robust as it competitors (yet). I find it frequently makes up sources and links even after additional prompting to verify them. Clearly, the underlying models need some work. The ability to make projects and specific agents is also missing but that should arrive soon according to the most recent road map. Finally, Lumo has limited utility for devs which to be fair is probably outside the scope of the current project which is to act as an everyday AI assistant. There is not CLI tool or extensions to add to modern IDEs (latter could be difficult to do since it depends on the privacy guarantees of the IDE). All in all this is an interesting project and its main benefit is its privacy guarantees. I look forward to the new features and model improvements in the coming months.

Lumo is a solid 4/5. I’ve asked questions about numerous topics and it is pretty good, but not the best. I prefer Lumo for the privacy aspect, but you need to make sure that web search is on and specifically ask it to give answers with up-to-date information through web search. One chat was clearly based on outdated information, as it was giving answers that I knew were incorrect. I asked why and I pointed out I have web search on. It then told me that it decides when the chat begins whether it uses web search or not. (I’m not sure if this has been fixed or if it’s known to be an issue.) Make sure that you ask it if web search is enabled prior to any conversations. The latest training is from April 2024, so if you have questions about a person or situation that has changed since then, you will get wildly different answers with old and new information. One time it fact checked me over a person’s recent death, stating that the person was alive when they aren’t. Like with any AI, it’s a good tool, but ask clarifying questions and ask for updated information, especially if you have a question that is relevant to today. Any AI is only as good as the questions asked and its programming.

I really wanted to love Lumo because I like Proton’s other site of apps. But unfortunately when I ask Lumo questions, he tends to give me outdated info or broken website links and was a bit defensive when asked questions about politics and the US economy. Was a bit strange because I would have expected a less emotional or dismissive response. Hope they keep working on him!

Constantly need to force close app when trying to resume.

It’s free, no questions asked, but runs on a very obvious and small open-source model. It struggles to maintain context and understand human interaction, making conversations very robotic and unnatural.

Dangerous for society

I want to update but I couldn't understand what the dev was trying to say in the update description. Maybe next time I'll be able to take this app seriously. I have no idea if it is AI slop or if the app's a joke

Needs better picture upload option otherwise live the privacy and security of this app

Lumos training data is from April 2024 No Voice Mode like ChatGPT No Image Generation Cannot take pictures and directly upload into your Lumo chat Common image formats cannot be uploaded to Lumo chat No Apple Watch or MacOS dedicated apps Often repeats my question as the response Intermittently errors saying unavailable Not good at remembering past chats Still the best option if you’re looking for privacy. It’s time to actually finish your apps and ecosystem. People are leaving because of issues and lack of features.

Stopped working with new update. After a couple of triesand some time later is working again.