Lumo by Proton

A Good Start, Needs Improvement

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.

Good for privacy, not always the best for answers

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 One chat was clearly based on outdated information, as it was giving answers that I knew were incorrect.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.