Your AI Privacy Toolkit

Easy ways to protect your documents, data, and chats

Today’s newsletter in a nutshell: AI tools quietly collect a lot of info about you. Weeve and Lumo AI Paper Trail help rein that in. They worked well in my tests. Both are free and easy to use. For chats you want to keep private, Duck AI is one of several new services worth a try.

Weeve 📃 Anonymize Data You Share with AI

Weeve helps you avoid pouring private info to an AI assistant. Upload a file or paste text you’re planning to run through an AI. Weeve removes names, addresses, company details, and other identifying elements. You can then use the anonymized text in an AI prompt.

It’s free and takes seconds. No download or log-in required.

Why this matters: If you’re on a free AI plan, what you feed a chatbot might later be used to train its model. (Opt out of training by adjusting your settings.) AI assistants have in some cases leaked sensitive material to the public. To reduce the likelihood of your info ending up in a database, strip out the private parts first.

When you might use this: Let’s say you’re double-checking on insurance fine print or a contract. Before signing that kind of complex agreement, it can be useful to have an AI assistant comb through the details. That makes it less likely you’ll miss something important buried on page 79. Especially if you’re not a lawyer or a technical expert. Now you can use Weeve to avoid spilling the paperwork’s personal details into an AI query.

Weeve, a Dutch startup, makes a few other useful tools, including:

• Free transcription in 25 languages for recordings of up to 60 minutes

• A free online audio recorder

Private Meeting Transcription

Weeve’s primary product is a local-first AI note taker for Mac. It records, transcribes, and summarizes your meetings securely on your laptop. Nothing leaves your computer. No bot joins on Zoom.

Pricing: The note taker is free for up to 10 recordings a month or €120/year (about $140) for unlimited access.

MacWhisper is a great free, private option I’ve used for years. It transcribes live meetings as well as YouTube videos and audio or video files. It works offline and nothing leaves your computer. The developer frequently updates it and adds new capabilities. If you want all the premium features, a lifetime license costs €64 (about $75). You can use it on multiple computers. I paid to upgrade because I use it to transcribe what I record on my Sony digital recorder.

Vibe performs a similar function for Windows (or Mac). It’s free, offline, and works in nearly 100 languages. You can record live or upload video or audio files. Bonus feature: transcribe videos from YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn by pasting in a URL.

Note: All of these tools use your laptop’s mic, so they work for in person and online meetings. The transcription quality across services is consistently high, so deciding between them is mainly a matter of price, design, and which specific features you prefer.

Caveat: For most private services like these, you’ll have to download local AI models to process audio on your device. That can take up lots of space on your laptop. It works best if you have at least 8GB of RAM. Your 2018 computer may struggle.

Sponsored Message

Gather ideas for what to read next

As I prep my new reading list for the upcoming academic year, Shortform helps me explore books I might want to read.

It also gives me a practical way to revisit ones I’ve already read. Its guides are written and edited by actual humans. The analysis takes me beyond the surface. And I like the guides’ examples and quotes.

On the Shortform app, I recently read the guide to Click by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, which referred me to the summary of Adam Grant’s book, Think Again, about the value of reconsidering our views.

Wonder Tools readers get a free trial and 49% off the annual plan.

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AI Paper Trail 🕵 See What You’ve Revealed

Export your AI memory from ChatGPT or Claude. Then import that file containing your past dialogues into the Lumo AI Paper Trail app. It will analyze how much you’ve exposed to AI tools. No one but you has access to the assessment.

I was surprised by how detailed a digital profile I had accumulated over the past couple of years. Seeing how much you’ve revealed might inspire you to erase part of your AI’s memory.

Proton runs the service. It’s a privacy-focused company based in Switzerland. Proton also offers privacy-focused email and VPN for surfing without being spied on. Its newest product, Lumo, is a confidential AI chat assistant.

Scrub a PDF

Basalt can securely redact anything from a PDF. Other tools allow you to draw a box on top of something to hide sensitive material. But the text underneath survives. Basalt actually destroys the redacted words or images. It also has 17 other PDF features, like compressing, watermarking, or comparing two PDFs to identify what’s changed. It works offline. Caveat: It’s a simple utility, so don’t expect design flourishes. You can’t use it to make a PDF look nicer.

Pricing: Free to try for 24 hours, then $29 for a lifetime license for up to three Macs.

Chat with AI Privately

63% of the top 500 AI companies assessed in a new Cybernews analysis don’t disclose whether they train on user data. It’s hard to figure out what they do with your info. In the AI Trustworthiness Ranking, Google and Adobe were among the big names with the best scores for security and data privacy. RoomGPT and GenYOU earned the lowest scores. To share guidance, I’ve been trying several services that prioritize privacy.

Duck AI

DuckDuckGo’s free AI chat anonymizes your chats. You don’t need to log in or download anything. Nothing you type trains a model. Choose among ChatGPT, Claude, and open-source alternatives.

Pricing: Free for basic models, or $10/month ($100/year) for Plus, with more advanced AI and a VPN to keep all of your Web browsing private.

Privatemode

This German AI company keeps all data encrypted, even during processing. It’s designed mainly for people in regulated industries. But anyone can use the new encrypted Web chat version with open-source models. Free, with limits, for personal queries.

Venice

Private, uncensored chat. No log-in and no speech restrictions. Venice encrypts your prompts and doesn’t store them. It also lets you create characters to chat with or use ones other people have made.

Pricing: The free plan gives you 10 text prompts a day or 15 images. Pro ($18/month) includes unlimited text prompts, 1,000 daily images, and access to top text, image, and video models.

Bottom Line

Of these chat options I feel most comfortable relying on Proton’s Lumo AI and Duck AI. They work well and both companies have strong track records. I trust them. For offline AI, I like Jan, a free app I wrote about recently.

Read Part One of this Series 👇