Why I Switched from ChatGPT to Lumo for Daily Tasks

I used ChatGPT for almost everything—drafting emails, summarizing articles, brainstorming project ideas. It worked well. But somewhere along the way, I started wondering what happened to all those conversations. The sensitive drafts, the personal questions, the late-night brain dumps. Where did they go? Who could read them?

That unease grew until I decided to try Lumo, Proton's AI assistant. The selling point was simple: zero-access encryption on chat history. Proton can't read my conversations. No one can, except me, on my devices. That's not a feature—it's a fundamental architecture choice.

Functionally, Lumo handles everything I used ChatGPT for. Drafting, editing, research questions, code snippets, general problem-solving. The writing output feels slightly less generic, which I appreciate. It doesn't over-polish everything into that recognizable AI tone.

The integration with Proton's ecosystem is where it shines for me. Since I already use Proton Mail, having Lumo assist with email drafting without my messages leaving the encrypted environment feels meaningfully different from pasting sensitive text into a third-party tool.

The free tier covers casual use. I upgraded to Lumo Plus for the web search feature and unlimited queries—it's $12.99 a month, or about $10 if you go annual. Reasonable for what amounts to a private research assistant.

I'm not anti-other-AI. They're powerful tools. But for anything personal, professional, or sensitive, I've moved it all to Lumo. The convenience of mainstream AI isn't worth the trade-off if you can't control who sees your data.

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