Meet Confer: Signal founder’s privacy-focused, end-to-end encrypted ChatGPT alternative | Technology News
3 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jan 22, 2026 08:56 AM IST
If you are someone who wants to keep their life private, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others can feel unsafe as they are prone to leaking your private conversations. To protect privacy, Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of the secure messaging platform – Signal, launched Confer, a privacy-focused AI chatbot that keeps your communications “end-to-end encrypted”.
In a blog post, Marlinspike says that conversations with Confer “are encrypted so that nobody else can see them.” Additionally, the AI chatbot cannot read your messages, train on them, or hand them over to anyone else, including the host, third parties, or law enforcement.
The Signal founder says he developed Confer because if a chat interface like ChatGPT or Gemini “shows a private conversation between two people, it should actually be a private conversation between two people, rather than a ‘group chat’ with unknown parties underneath the interface.
What is Confer and how does it work?
While Marlinspike hasn’t specified which large language models power Confer, in a message to TIME on Signal, the messaging platform’s founder said the AI chatbot uses different models for different tasks, with advanced models limited to premium subscribers. “My hope is that we don’t have to burden people with selecting or thinking about a model, in the same way Signal dosen’t burden people with selecting a [cryptographic] cipher,” he adds.
Confer encrypts your private chats so no one can read them. (Express Photo)
When you sign up for Confer, the AI chatbot won’t ask you to set a password, but instead will automatically set up a passkey. In addition to passkey encryption, the AI chatbot also uses server encryption and WebAuthn PRF extension, with end-to-end encryption relying on private keys and local devices.
Confer also operates in an isolated space called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) and uses remote attestation to verify code running on its backend. The user interface is pretty similar to ChatGPT, with the left side panel allowing users to see their past chats and change settings. The AI chatbot can also import all your conversations with ChatGPT and Claude, and an iOS app is also underway.
At the time of writing, Confer’s free tier is limited to 20 messages every day, but those looking to get unlimited access will have to pay $35 per month. This is much more expensive than the likes of ChatGPT and Gemini, but if you are someone who wants to protect their privacy, this is a good option.
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Confer’s launch comes as the Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker told the public at the World Economic Forum in Davos that AI agents are a threat to encrypted messaging as they need access to sensitive information and are prone to data leaks and hacks.
