A new AI assistant built by Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike is offering an alternative to mainstream chatbots by prioritising user privacy and avoiding data collection at every layer of its design.
The project, called Confer, launched in December and is designed to resemble services such as ChatGPT or Claude while ensuring that user conversations are not stored, accessed, or used for training or advertising.
Privacy As A Core Design Choice
Marlinspike said Confer was built in response to the sensitive and personal nature of AI chat interfaces, which often prompt users to share detailed thoughts, concerns, and information.
He described AI assistants as technologies that encourage disclosure in ways few other tools have, and said combining that level of insight with advertising would raise serious concerns. Confer is structured so that the service operator never has access to user conversations, removing the possibility of data reuse.
How Confer Protects User Data
Confer uses multiple systems working together to limit data exposure. Messages sent to and from the service are encrypted using the WebAuthn passkey standard. That system works most smoothly on mobile devices and Macs running macOS Sequoia, though it can also be used on Windows or Linux with the help of a password manager.
On the server side, all AI inference runs inside a Trusted Execution Environment, or TEE. These environments use hardware-level protections to isolate sensitive processes, and Confer uses remote attestation to verify that the system has not been altered or compromised.
Within that secure environment, an array of open-weight foundation models processes user queries. Because the operator cannot access the decrypted data, conversations cannot be logged, analysed, or reused.
Trade-Offs In Complexity And Cost
The architecture is more complex than standard AI inference setups, which already require significant infrastructure. Marlinspike said that complexity is the cost of delivering a system where users can discuss sensitive topics without risking data leakage.
Confer offers a free tier that allows up to 20 messages per day and five active conversations. A paid plan costs $35 per month and provides unlimited usage, access to more advanced models, and additional personalisation options.
The price is notably higher than ChatGPT’s Plus subscription, which costs $20 per month, reflecting the additional technical safeguards built into the service.
Positioning Against Ad-Driven AI Models
The launch comes as major AI providers explore advertising and broader monetisation strategies. With those shifts, concerns have grown about whether conversational data could be used in ways similar to social media targeting.
Confer’s design avoids that model entirely by preventing the service from seeing or retaining user data in the first place. Marlinspike said that approach mirrors the principles that guided the development of Signal, where privacy protections are enforced through system design rather than policy promises.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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