Privacy-First AI Chatbot Confer Launches as ChatGPT Alternative
What if you could use an AI assistant without worrying your private thoughts are being stored, analyzed, or sold? That’s the promise of Confer, a new privacy-focused AI chatbot launched in December 2025 by Moxie Marlinspike—the same cryptographer who built Signal into the gold standard for secure messaging. Designed to mimic the user experience of popular tools like ChatGPT, Confer takes a radically different approach under the hood: it ensures your conversations stay yours alone, with zero data retention, no model training on your inputs, and no hidden tracking.
As AI assistants become more embedded in daily life—from drafting emails to offering mental health support—concerns about data privacy have intensified. With reports that major AI platforms may soon integrate advertising, the idea of confidential chats being monetized feels increasingly real. Confer arrives at a critical moment, offering a technically rigorous alternative that prioritizes user sovereignty over corporate convenience.
Why Privacy Matters in AI Assistants
Most mainstream AI chatbots operate on a simple but troubling premise: to serve you better, they need to remember you. That means logging your prompts, storing metadata, and often using your interactions to refine their models. While this can improve performance over time, it also creates a detailed behavioral profile—one that could be accessed by advertisers, law enforcement, or even hackers.
Moxie Marlinspike has long argued that intimacy shouldn’t come at the cost of surveillance. “It’s a form of technology that actively invites confession,” he noted in early statements about Confer. People share deeply personal details with AI—relationship struggles, medical symptoms, financial worries—often assuming those exchanges are private. But unless explicitly designed otherwise, they rarely are.
Confer flips this model on its head. By leveraging end-to-end encryption principles similar to those in Signal, it ensures that even the service provider never sees your full conversation. Your queries are processed in a way that strips away identifying context before reaching the AI model, and responses are delivered without creating a persistent record.
How Confer Works Without Compromising Privacy
At first glance, Confer looks familiar: a clean chat interface, responsive replies, and support for follow-up questions. But beneath the surface, its architecture is engineered for minimal trust. Instead of sending your raw input directly to a cloud-based large language model (LLM), Confer uses a technique called client-side preprocessing.
Here’s how it works: when you type a message, your device (phone or browser) breaks it into anonymized fragments. Only the essential semantic components needed for the AI to generate a useful response are transmitted—and even those are encrypted in transit. The server processes the request, returns a response, and immediately discards any temporary data. Nothing is logged. Nothing is stored. Nothing is used to retrain the model.
This approach isn’t just theoretical. Confer is built on open-source foundations, allowing independent security researchers to audit its code. Transparency, Marlinspike argues, is non-negotiable for tools handling sensitive human communication. Unlike closed-source competitors, Confer doesn’t ask users to “just trust us”—it gives them the tools to verify trust themselves.
A Response to the Ad-Supported AI Future
The timing of Confer’s launch is no accident. In late 2025, OpenAI confirmed it was exploring ad-supported tiers for its consumer AI products—a move many interpreted as a step toward harvesting user data for targeted advertising. If your chat history starts influencing which products you see online, the line between assistant and advertiser blurs dangerously.
Confer rejects that trajectory entirely. There are no premium upsells, no data partnerships, and no plans for monetization through user behavior. Funding comes from grants and donations, mirroring Signal’s nonprofit-inspired model. The goal isn’t scale or shareholder value—it’s to prove that ethical AI is not only possible but practical.
For tech-savvy users already wary of Big Tech’s data appetites, Confer offers a rare combination: usability without compromise. You don’t need to install special software or learn complex workflows. It runs in a standard web browser and supports mobile devices out of the box, aligning with 2026’s emphasis on mobile-first, accessible design.
Real-World Use Cases Where Privacy Is Non-Negotiable
Imagine a journalist drafting a sensitive source communication, a therapist exploring case notes, or a teenager seeking advice about mental health. In each scenario, the last thing anyone needs is a permanent digital trail tied to their identity. Confer fills a crucial gap for these high-stakes interactions.
Early adopters report using Confer for everything from legal research to personal journaling. One healthcare professional noted, “I can ask about symptoms or treatment options without worrying my query ends up in a dataset that might later affect insurance algorithms.” Another user, a freelance writer, said, “It’s the only AI I’ll use for brainstorming controversial topics.”
These aren’t edge cases—they represent a growing demand for digital tools that respect boundaries. As AI becomes more conversational and emotionally intelligent, the expectation of confidentiality should rise, not fall. Confer treats that expectation as a baseline, not a luxury.
Challenges and Limitations of a Privacy-First Model
Of course, privacy comes with trade-offs. Because Confer doesn’t retain conversation history, it can’t offer the same kind of contextual memory that makes ChatGPT feel “smart” over long dialogues. Each exchange is treated as largely independent, which may frustrate users accustomed to AI remembering prior turns in a chat.
Additionally, the computational safeguards required for anonymity can introduce slight latency compared to centralized models. And while Confer supports many common tasks—writing, summarizing, explaining concepts—it doesn’t yet integrate with third-party apps or offer multimodal features like image generation.
But Marlinspike and his small team view these not as flaws, but as intentional design choices. “We’re not trying to build the fastest or flashiest AI,” he said in a recent developer update. “We’re building one you can trust with your secrets.”
Future updates may explore privacy-preserving memory techniques, such as local storage on the user’s device (never synced to the cloud), but only if they meet Confer’s strict security bar.
What This Means for the Future of AI Ethics
Confer’s emergence signals a shift in the AI landscape—one where alternatives rooted in digital rights are not just possible but gaining traction. It challenges the assumption that convenience must always trump control, and that data extraction is the only viable business model.
By combining technical credibility (Marlinspike’s track record), transparent architecture, and a clear user benefit, Confer embodies the kind of trustworthy innovation that both regulators and consumers are demanding.
As governments worldwide debate AI regulation—from the EU AI Act to U.S. executive orders—projects like Confer demonstrate that self-imposed ethical constraints can outpace legislation. They also empower users to vote with their attention: choosing tools that align with their values, not just their immediate needs.
How to Try Confer Today
Confer is now available as a free web application, with no account required. Simply visit the official site, type your question, and receive a response—no email, no phone number, no tracking cookies. Mobile users will find the interface fully responsive, with fast load times and intuitive navigation optimized for thumb-friendly scrolling.
While still in its early stages, the project welcomes community feedback and contributions. Given its open-source nature, developers can inspect the code, suggest improvements, or even host their own instances—though the core privacy guarantees remain strongest on the official platform.
In a world racing toward AI ubiquity, Confer offers something increasingly rare: a pause button. A space where you can speak freely, think aloud, and seek help—without leaving digital footprints behind. For anyone who’s ever hesitated before hitting “send” on a private thought, that’s not just innovation. It’s relief.
