Confer Shows What a Privacy-First AI Could Look Like

[madtrader]

In December, Moxie Marlinspike launched Confer, an AI assistant designed to feel familiar to users of ChatGPT or Claude, but with a radically different approach behind the scenes. Built with the same open-source philosophy that made Signal widely trusted, Confer is structured so that user conversations are never accessible to the service operator.

That design choice isn’t accidental. Marlinspike argues that chat-based AI “actively invites confession,” often revealing more about a person than any prior technology. In that context, mixing personal conversations with advertising would feel less like marketing and more like exploitation — a line Confer is explicitly built not to cross.

[nihalsari]

convenience is nice but yeah, the data tradeoff keeps getting heavier