Proton Mail has a new AI-powered feature that could help it keep pace with the artificial intelligence tools Google and Microsoft offer for their email services. Proton Scribe is an AI writing assistant that can help you compose and clean up your drafts. Scribe was designed with privacy in mind — the assistant can’t train on your inbox data, as Proton Mail has a zero-access approach to encryption. Proton doesn’t save or log anything from your email drafts either.
According to Proton, a writing assistant was one of the most-requested features in a recent user survey. The company designed it as a secure alternative to other generative AI options. Scribe can be run locally if your system is compatible. Otherwise, you can run it on Proton’s no-log servers. The assistant is powered by open-source models and code. As such, Proton says the tool itself is open-source and that independent researchers are free to carry out privacy and security audits.
Scribe can be accessed by clicking the pencil icon in the Proton Mail composer. After telling the tool what you want to say in an email, it will create a draft for you. You’ll be able to use the Shorten and Proofread options to condense and clean up your draft. There’s also the option to make the tone of your email more formal with the click of a button. You can review and tweak your drafts before sending them.
Proton says Scribe only fully supports English for now and it’s rolling the assistant out to eligible users. Visionary and Lifetime subscribers will have access at no extra cost. Those on a Proton Business plan — Mail Essentials, Mail Professional or Proton Business Suite — can try Proton Scribe for free for 14 days. After that, the tool costs $3 per month per user.
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