Privacy-focused tech company Proton has launched a free tool designed to show users exactly what large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude have learned about them from months or years of conversation history, a capability that speaks directly to the shadow AI problem now facing enterprise security teams.
The tool, called AI Paper Trail, works by analysing conversation exports that users download directly from ChatGPT or Claude. It then generates a personal report that includes an AI Exposure Score quantifying how much has been extracted and how revealing it is, a breakdown of inferred personal information such as occupation, habits and relationships, an estimated financial value of that data to an AI provider, and a “Privacy Type” profiling the user’s approach to data sharing. Proton says uploaded files are deleted immediately after analysis and are never stored on its servers.
For security leaders, the launch lands at an awkward moment. Employees are increasingly turning to consumer AI chatbots for work-related tasks, drafting emails, summarising documents, troubleshooting code, often on personal accounts that sit entirely outside corporate visibility and data governance controls. AI Paper Trail offers a rare, concrete illustration of what that unmanaged usage can expose over time, from project details and client names to health, financial and relationship information that has nothing to do with the job at hand.
“People understand that AI collects data, but most don’t realise how revealing their conversation history becomes over time,” said Eamonn Maguire, Director of Engineering, ML & AI at Proton. “AI Paper Trail makes that invisible profile visible. We want people to understand what they’re sharing with AI systems so they can make informed decisions about the tools they use.”
The company has not disclosed the methodology behind the Exposure Score or the data valuation figures, which may draw scrutiny from researchers and journalists looking to verify the tool’s claims.
Built on Proton’s privacy-first AI assistant
AI Paper Trail is powered by Lumo, Proton’s own AI assistant, which the company positions as an alternative to mainstream chatbots for privacy-conscious individuals and businesses. Proton says Lumo keeps no server-side logs of conversations, does not use chats to train its models, and encrypts conversations end-to-end so that even Proton itself cannot access them. The assistant is built on open-source language models and runs from European data centres, outside the jurisdiction of the US and Chinese providers that dominate the market.
AI Paper Trail currently supports conversation exports from ChatGPT and Claude, with Proton planning to add further AI platforms in future releases. The tool is available free at lumo.proton.me/aitrail.
