Moxie Marlinspike, the engineer behind Signal Messenger, is launching Confer, an open‑source AI assistant that mirrors Signal’s end‑to‑end encryption. Confer runs its large language models and backend entirely on verifiable open‑source code, storing every user prompt and response in a trusted execution environment (TEE) that even server admins cannot read. Encryption keys stay on the user’s device, so only the account holder can decrypt the conversation.

Marlinspike’s push comes after courts forced OpenAI to preserve all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats, raising doubts about the privacy of AI‑driven therapy sessions. Sam Altman warned that such rulings could expose even intimate exchanges. Privacy researcher Em called AI assistants “the archnemesis of data privacy” because they harvest massive user data without clear consent. By encrypting interactions, Confer aims to make AI chats feel like private confessions rather than data fed into a corporate lake.

If the project gains traction, it could pressure larger platforms like Google Gemini to adopt comparable safeguards, reshaping how developers think about user confidentiality in generative AI.