Proton Launches Privacy-Focused ‘Scribe’ AI Writing Assistant

Proton announced today the launch of Proton Scribe, a new AI writing assistant that will be integrated into Proton Mail. Just like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, Proton Scribe will be able to draft emails based on a natural language prompt, change the tone of an email, and proofread it, all while using privacy-protecting AI.

The company based in Switzerland explained today that Proton Scribe uses local AI built on open-source models and that user data is never sent to the cloud. Proton also promised to not use user data to train its AI or share it with third parties, and it believes this privacy-first approach should address most security concerns about AI chatbots.

“We realised that irrespective of whether or not Proton builds AI tools, users are going to use AI, often with significant privacy consequences. Rather than have users copying their sensitive communications into third-party AI tools that often have appalling privacy practices, it would be better to instead build privacy-first AI tools directly into Proton Mail,” said Proton founder Andy Yen. “However, we wanted to do this in a uniquely Proton way, enabled by our business model that relies on the user being in control of their data, rather than the platform exploiting it.”

Proton Scribe will start rolling out today on the Proton Mail web and desktop apps, and it will be available for free for all existing Proton Visionary and Lifetime subscribers. However, for business customers with Mail Essentials, Mail Professional, and Proton Business Suite plans, Proton Scribe will be available as an add-on priced at $2.99 per user per month, with a 14-day free trial.

Yen justified making Proton Scribe available as an add-on to all Proton Mail business plans by the fact that building privacy-protecting AI is more expensive by design. History has shown that if forced to make the trade-off between privacy and productivity, productivity usually wins. Building privacy for the future requires eliminating that trade-off. With Proton Scribe, we took a more difficult path, but it is the only one that enables both privacy and productivity,” the Proton founder explained.