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Proton is getting into generative AI with an assistant called Lumo, which it pitches as a more private alternative to ChatGPT. While Lumo will offer a similar chat-based interface with support for web search and file analysis, Proton says it won’t store records of users’ conversations or use them to train AI. Lumo is available for free on the web and mobile devices, with an optional $13-per-month or $120-per-year subscription for unlimited chats, extended chat history, and larger file uploads. Andy Yen, Proton’s founder and CEO, says Lumo is a way for people to utilize AI assistants without having to worry about how their conversations could be used. “I think it’s critically important, given the amount of sensitive information that we are dumping into AI, that there be a private alternative,” Yen says. Why you might want Protons private AI It’s already possible to maintain some privacy while using major AI tools. ChatGPT, for instance, offers a setting to opt out of training OpenAI’s models. It also provides a “Temporary Chat” feature for conversations that don’t appear in your chat history or affect what ChatGPT remembers about you. Google’s Gemini also lets users opt out of model training through a Gemini Apps Activity setting. But those settings are not the default, and neglecting them effectively sends your data into a black box. Once your data’s been fed to a model for training, it can be extremely difficult to remove, and some providers, including Google, will even show a subset of conversations to human reviewers without disclosing when that happens. ChatGPT also warns that its “Temporary Chat” mode still stores conversations for up to 30 days for safety reasons. [Image: Proton] “Before we created Lumo, I’d use ChatGPT sometimes,” Yen says. “But then I’d feel really dirty after using it, because who the hell knows what Sam [Altman, OpenAI’s CEO] is going to do with all my data?” Proton isn’t the first company to offer a more private alternative. The privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo launched its own AI tool, Duck.ai, last year, with a similar promise not to keep a record of users’ conversations or use them for AI training. The difference is that DuckDuckGo has arrangements with major AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and it sends queries to their servers through a proxy that removes personal information. Those AI providers have promised not to use Duck.ai conversations for training purposes. [Image: Proton] Proton isn’t involving major AI providers at all. Instead, Proton’s Lumo AI uses a mix of open-source models that the company runs on its own servers. While conversations aren’t end-to-end encrypted, Proton says it doesn’t keep logs of users’ chats, and conversations are decrypted only on users’ devices. “We’re giving people a very clear guarantee of privacy in that your chat history is never going to be saved, logged, or even accessible to us, because it’s encrypted in a way that we cannot actually decrypt it,” Yen says. And why you might not Proton’s privacy-centric approach has trade-offs, both with its other products and with Lumo. With Proton Mail, the company can’t offer server-based email search because it has no way of accessing users’ email contents. Instead, Proton builds a local search index on each device where the Mail app is stored. I recently moved away from Proton Mail in large part because the search function was too unreliable. In the case of Proton’s Lumo AI, its capabilities are already more limited than other assistants. It can’t connect to other apps and servicesthough Yen says integrations with Proton’s email service and document editor are possibleand it can’t tailor its responses based on past conversations, akin to ChatGPT’s “Memory” feature. Its mobile app offers voice input, but not a free-flowing voice conversation mode. Proton also hasn’t disclosed which open-source models it’s using, and they may not be on par with state-of-the-art models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. [Image: Proton] Yen says he hasn’t noticed any issues in his own use of Lumo, but acknowledges that some trade-offs are likely. “If you want to do things in a privacy-first way, there are going to be sometimes compromises that have to be made,” he says. “It’s a new way of doing AI, newground that we have to break.” What it means for Proton For Proton as an organization, a foray into generative AI could also make some users uneasy. Proton has always prided itself on running a sustainable business that doesn’t rely on venture capital or public shareholders, and it now operates as a nonprofit. Generative AI, meanwhile, is famously a money pit, and like other AI providers, Proton will be offering Lumo access for free. More broadly, AI competes on some level with human creativity and employment, and it uses vast amounts of energy. Proton has already faced a backlash from some of its users after adding AI writing tools to its document editor, then invoked a similar backlash days later with a foray into cryptocurrency wallets. [Image: Proton] Yen’s feeling is that AI represents the future of the web and isn’t going away, so Proton should offer a private alternative. While Proton will likely lose money at the outset, that was also the case when it entered the VPN and email businesses. Yen believes the organization can operate AI efficiently and can always adjust what it offers for free if the losses pile up. “We believe strongly that this is the right thing to do for the world at this moment, and we’re going to pursue it even if it ends up costing us money,” Yen says. “But of course we’re not going to compromise Proton overall financially.”
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E-Commerce
I recently saw James Gunns new Superman movie, and as I sat there in the dark theater, I couldnt help but think that Nicholas Hoult based his Lex Luthor on Elon Musk. Something about that smirk he kept flashing throughout the movie reminded me so much of the Tesla CEO’s. But Hoults mannerisms werent the only thing. His Luthor had several other characteristics that I, and many others, see in Musk, most notably a savior complex and a need to be adored. Thats in addition to the fact that in this film, Luthor is a tech billionaire with significant contracts with, and influence over, the government. The thing is, during a lie detector test conducted somewhat in jest by Vanity Fair, Hoult told Superman star David Corenswet that he did not base his Lex Luthor portrayal on Elon Musk. Corenswet noted that Hoult had previously said he wanted to make his Luthor as alpha as possible, and asked whether there were any alpha male podcasts Hoult listened to to prep for the role. Hoult replied that he hadnt listened to any podcasts, but he did listen to the audiobook of Elon Musk’s book, even though I didn’t base the character on Elon at all. But I just thought it’d be interesting. [Note: Hoult did not clarify if he was talking about Musk’s official biography, written by Walter Isaacson in 2023, or Ashlee Vance’s unofficial Musk biography, from 2015.] Still, its hard not to spot the similarities between the controversial Musk and Supermans greatest foe. And Superman isnt the first movie with such similarities, intended or not. In recent years, Musk and other tech billionaires have seemed to have served as direct inspiration for movie villains. Yet things haven’t always been this way. [Photo: Marvel Studios] Elon Musk inspired the most iconic superhero of the 21st century Before Robert Downey Jr. starred as Tony Stark in 2008s Iron Man, few people outside of the comic book world could tell you who Iron Man was. Yet, thanks largely to Downey Jr.s portrayal, Iron Man became a household nameand kick-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has allowed now-owner Disney to rake in tens of billions of dollars in box office receipts over the past 17 years. In the script, Downey Jr.s Stark was charming, intelligent, and slightly arrogant. He leveraged his extreme wealth and technological prowess to make the world a better place. This take on the characterwho had existed in comic book form since 1963was heavily based on Elon Musk. In a 2022 interview with New York Magazine, Iron Man screenwriter Mark Fergus made it clear that the Tesla billionaire was an inspiration for Stark. Fergus said that Stark had historically been a Howard Hughes-style figure, but 2008s Iron Man needed a more contemporary inspiration. Fergus and his colleagues decided that the contemporary Stark was somewhat of a trinity figure, a mixture of three people. The first two were Donald Trump and maybe a little Steve Jobs. But it was Elon Musk who was the guy who grabbed the torch [from Howard Hughes]an industrialist who also would appear in the gossip pages. Trump was fun before he became presidenthe was actually kind of a goofy celebrity. Steve Jobs was always serious and angry; he never quite had that gift of the bullshit . . . Fergus explained. Musk took the brilliance of Jobs with the showmanship of Trump. He was the only one who had the fun factor and the celebrity vibe and actual business substance. Marvel didnt shy away from this comparison, either. After the first film became a smash hit in 2008, the studio quickly greenlit a sequel, Iron Man 2, which came out in 2010. In that film, Downey Jr.s Stark actually meets the real Elon Musk at a party in Monaco and compliments the real-world billionaire on SpaceX’s Merlin engines. Yet, the late 2000s are a long time ago now, especially in terms of politics, culture, and Musks public persona. Musk and tech billionaires are now movie villains Ive previously opined about how the world will likely never have another Steve Jobsa tech leader beloved by the general public. There are many reasons for this. The primary one is that Big Tech companies were generally seen as wondrous institutions improving our lives on a nearly monthly basis in the early 2000s. Since then, their integration with our lives and influence over it have dramatically expandedand not for the better. Tech companies are now largely viewed as self-interested entities that prioritize their profits over the greater good. E-commerce giants destroy small businesses, social media companies engagement algorithms reward bad behavior and poison public discourse, and artificial intelligence firms are so entwined with government and power that one cant help but be concerned about where it will all lead. And because of this shift in public sentiment towards tech companies, a shift has also occurred in the publics perception of the billionaire CEOs who lead them. This is perhaps nowhere more true than with Musk, who has publicly involved himself in governmental affairs of nations like no other CEO before him. All these changes have led, rightfully, to more distrust of the tech industry and those who lead the companies that power it. Suddenly, those same leaders have become the role models for fictional movie villains. It’s hard to watch the 2017 film The Circle and not see parallels between Tom Hankss evil ocial media CEO and Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg. And two films in 2022Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Jurassic World Dominion seem to have patterned their villains after Musk and Apples Tim Cook, respectively. The thing is, no director or actor in these movies has confirmed that any real-life tech CEO is the direct inspiration for these characters. In Glass Onions case, director Rian Johnson denied that the antagonist, Miles Bron, played by Edward Norton, was based on Musk, despite many observers seeing similarities between the two. Thats just sort of a horrible, horrible accident, Johnson told Wired. But he also noted that Theres a lot of general stuff about that sort of species of tech billionaire that went directly into [the movie], adding, But obviously, it has almost a weird relevance in exactly the current moment. That weird relevance has lasted years now. And, as Superman shows, it’s easier than ever for audiences to accept tech CEOs as modern-day villains, whether or not that villain is directly inspired by any singular individual. Societys ongoing tendency to now view tech leaders as the bad guys likely means that we can expect more in the future. At least until they own all the movie studios.
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Just like the dodo and passenger pigeon before it, the affordable new car is about to go extinct as a species. The last new Mitsubishi Mirage model is expected to be sold by the end of this summerand after that, there will be no new cars available for sale in the U.S. for less than $20,000. The Mirage is a fuel-efficient compact hatchback, and until it sells out, it is the cheapest new car on the market. In June it sold for an average transaction price of $18,484. [Photo: Mitsubishi] The Mirage was able to stay so cheap by offering the bare minimum. It’s tiny. And while it has now-standard features like a touchscreen and rearview camera system, it doesn’t have much else. In Car and Drivers review of the final 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage G4, the publication gave the car a 3/10 rating, noting that it was cheap to buy but cheaply made, with a puny engine and drab driving demeanor. “Cheap? Yes. Cheerful? Not so much,” it said. This is a car that gets you from point A to point B. If you want to get there quickly, that’s extra. You get what you pay for. [Photo: Mitsubishi] Mitsubishi said last year that it was ending production of the Mirage, and now there are only some 1,700 left, according to data from the car-services firm Cox Automotive. Based on the current sales pace, the firm predicts the last Mirage will be sold by summer’s end. Buyers looking for the cheapest new car will then have to turn to the 2025 Nissan Versa S ($20,130) or 2025 Hyundai Venue SE ($21,695), per Cars.com. Inflation since the pandemic has hit the automotive industry especially hard, with the average transaction price for a new vehicle rising from about $40,000 in 2020 to nearly $49,000 in 2025, per Kelley Blue Book data. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have led to increased production costs, and while major automakers have yet to announce consumer-side price increases in response to new import duties, Doug Ostermann, CFO of Stellantis, said during a call on July 21 that he believes we’re coming to the end of that period.” While the Mirage is no-frills, it offered buyers an ultracheap option for when cost was the most important decision-making factor. Without it, the average price of new cars will only continue to climb.
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