If you are someone who values their privacy, then ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and other AI chatbots may seem unsafe to you as they can leak your private conversations. To address these privacy concerns, Signal’s founder, Moxie Marlinspike, has launched Confer, a privacy-focused AI chatbot that keeps your communications end-to-end encrypted.
In a blog post, Marlinspike says that conversations with Confer are “encrypted so that no one else can see them.” Additionally, the AI chatbot cannot read your messages, train on them, or share them with anyone else, including the host, third parties, or law enforcement agencies. Signal’s founders say they developed Confer because if a chat interface like ChatGPT or Gemini “appears to be a private conversation between two people, it should actually be a private conversation between two people, not a ‘group chat’ with strangers under the interface.”
What is Confer and how does it work?
Although Marlinspike hasn’t disclosed which major language models are used in Confer, in a message to TIME on Signal, the messaging platform’s founder said the AI chatbot uses different models for different tasks, with advanced models only available to premium subscribers. He added, “My hope is that we don’t burden people with choosing or thinking about which model to use, just as Signal doesn’t burden people with choosing which (cryptographic) cipher to use.”
When you sign up for Confer, the AI chatbot won’t ask you to set a password, but will instead automatically set a passkey. In addition to passkey encryption, the AI chatbot also uses server-side encryption and the WebAuthn PRF extension, where end-to-end encryption relies on a private key and the local device. Confer also operates in a separate environment called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and uses remote attestation to verify the code running on its backend. The user interface is similar to ChatGPT, with a panel on the left that allows users to view their previous chats and change settings. The AI chatbot can also import all your conversations from ChatGPT and Claude, and an iOS app is coming soon.
Currently, Confer’s free tier is limited to 20 messages per day, but those who want unlimited access will have to pay $35 per month. It’s a lot more expensive than apps like ChatGPT and Gemini, but if you’re someone who prioritizes protecting their privacy, this could be a good option.
The launch of Confer comes as Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker told attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos that AI agents pose a threat to encrypted messaging. This is because they require access to sensitive information and are vulnerable to data leaks and hacking.
