Proton's Andy Yen: Privacy and AI Will Have to Coexist

In a recent interview, Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen said his encrypted-services company's rapid growth is partly driven by users' frustration with AI being pushed into mainstream products like Gmail. Proton, which offers encrypted alternatives to Google's email, calendar, file storage and document tools, has grown to more than 100 million users since its founding in 2014.

Yen recalled that Proton was created in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations about government surveillance, but its founders quickly concluded that corporate data collection by companies such as Google and Meta posed an even bigger threat than government spying.

AI seen as unavoidable

Despite his reputation as a privacy advocate, Yen said he does not believe AI can simply be avoided. He argued that since AI is now a permanent feature of technology, the real question is who should control its future — dominant tech giants or independent companies with different incentives. That reasoning led Proton to launch its own AI chatbot, Lumo, last year, with an updated version released in late June.

Yen acknowledged that Proton users initially criticized the company for investing in AI features, but the same users later began demanding improvements to Lumo — a shift he said shows people are not opposed to AI itself, but to how large tech companies implement it.

Limits of the privacy guarantee

Unlike Proton Mail, which relies on mathematical encryption, Lumo currently depends on a company promise not to log conversations rather than a technical guarantee. Yen explained that fully encrypted AI conversation technology does not yet exist, but pointed to emerging approaches, including secure processing environments being developed by companies like Nvidia, that could eventually offer stronger protections.