Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike launched a new project in December called Confer, a privacy-conscious alternative to AI personal assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. Confer aims to provide a similar user experience to these popular chatbots, but with a backend designed to avoid data collection, addressing growing privacy concerns surrounding AI services.

The impetus behind Confer stems from the intimate nature of AI chatbots and the potential for misuse of personal data. Marlinspike emphasized the risks associated with combining AI's ability to gather personal information with advertising, likening it to "someone paying your therapist to convince you to buy something." Confer's architecture ensures that user conversations cannot be used to train the model or target ads because the host never gains access to the data.

Unlike many AI services that retain user data for model training and targeted advertising, Confer is built with open-source principles, similar to Signal. This approach prioritizes user privacy by preventing the storage of conversation data. The open-source nature of the project allows for public scrutiny and verification of its privacy claims.

The rise of AI personal assistants has sparked debate about the balance between convenience and privacy. As these technologies become more integrated into daily life, concerns about data collection and potential misuse are growing. OpenAI's exploration of advertising within ChatGPT has heightened these concerns, raising the specter of data collection practices similar to those employed by Facebook and Google.

Confer represents an effort to address these concerns by offering a privacy-focused alternative. By prioritizing data protection and transparency, the project aims to demonstrate a different model for AI service development. The current status of Confer and its future development plans were not immediately available.