Proton Upgrades Its Lumo AI Chatbot With Major Performance Gains
In July, Proton, the company best known for its encrypted Proton Mail and VPN services, launched a new privacy focused AI assistant named Lumo. Now, less than a month after its initial debut, Proton has begun rolling out the first major update for the chatbot. The company is releasing Lumo version 1.1 to all users, both free and paid, and claims the new iteration delivers significant performance improvements across a wide range of tasks.
According to Proton, the updated Lumo 1.1 performs significantly better overall compared to its predecessor. The company provided specific metrics to illustrate the gains. They claim the new model shows a 170 percent improvement in context understanding. This enhancement means Lumo is now much more accurate at answering user questions based on the specific documents and data shared with it during a conversation.
For developers and technical users, the update brings a notable boost in coding capabilities. Proton states that Lumo is now 40 percent better at generating functional, working code in response to user requests. Furthermore, the chatbot is reportedly 200 percent more effective at solving complex, multi step problems. This improvement also extends to its ability to select and use the correct internal tools to handle difficult and tricky prompts.
One of the weaker areas of the original Lumo release was its knowledge of current events, a common challenge for many AI models. Proton addressed this shortcoming in version 1.1 by integrating a better web search tool. The company says this upgrade should allow Lumo to provide more accurate and timely answers to questions about recent happenings while also reducing the frequency of AI hallucinations, where the model confidently states incorrect or fabricated information.
While Proton did not disclose the specific methodology used to measure these performance gains, it did share comparative screenshots. These images show responses from both Lumo 1.0 and Lumo 1.1 side by side. The visual evidence suggests that the new version does a better job of formatting its answers in a clear, logical, and easy to follow manner, improving the overall user experience.
A core tenet of Lumo, and all Proton products, remains a staunch commitment to user privacy. All conversations with the AI chatbot are encrypted end to end. Proton states that no conversation logs are stored or shared with the company itself or any third parties. To further bolster trust and transparency, Proton is also open sourcing the code for Lumo’s mobile applications. The code for both the iOS and Android apps is being released on GitHub, allowing the wider open source community to audit, verify, and validate the company’s security and privacy claims for themselves.
The rapid release of this substantial update signals Proton’s serious commitment to competing in the AI assistant space, differentiating itself not with the most features, but with a powerful combination of improving capability and a unique privacy first foundation.
