As artificial intelligence personal assistants become more embedded in daily life, concerns over data privacy are intensifying.

Many widely used AI tools require users to share sensitive personal information, much of which is stored and potentially repurposed by the companies behind the models.

With major AI developers already experimenting with advertising, critics warn that chatbot interactions could soon resemble the data-driven ecosystems that power platforms like Facebook and Google.

In response to these concerns, Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike has launched a new AI service aimed squarely at protecting user privacy.

Introduced in December, the project—called Confer—offers a conversational interface similar to ChatGPT or Claude, but with a fundamentally different approach behind the scenes.

Built with open-source principles similar to those that underpin Signal, Confer is structured to avoid data collection entirely, ensuring user conversations are neither stored nor used for advertising or model training.

Marlinspike says the motivation stems from the deeply personal way people engage with AI chat tools. He describes chat-based AI as a technology that actively encourages users to open up, often sharing thoughts and information they would not disclose elsewhere.

Combining such intimacy with advertising, he argues, creates ethical risks comparable to allowing third parties to influence a private therapy session for commercial gain.

To deliver on its privacy promise, Confer relies on multiple layers of technical safeguards. Messages are encrypted end-to-end using the WebAuthn passkey system, while all AI processing takes place inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE).

Additional remote attestation mechanisms are used to verify that the system has not been tampered with, and queries are handled by open-weight foundation models operating within this secure framework.

Although the setup is more complex than standard AI inference systems, it prevents the service provider from accessing user data.

Confer operates on a freemium model, offering a limited free tier capped at 20 messages per day and five active chats.

A paid subscription, priced at $35 per month, provides unlimited usage, access to more advanced models, and personalization features.

While the cost is higher than some mainstream AI subscriptions, Marlinspike maintains that strong privacy protections come at a premium—one he believes many users will be willing to pay.

Source: Techcrunch