Proton Launches Encrypted Docs, Promises No AI Training

Privacy-focused Swiss tech firm Proton has launched a Google Docs-like feature that allows Proton Drive users to edit, share, and update documents in real time.

Proton Drive Docs are end-to-end encrypted so they can't be used to train generative AI models unless the document's creator actively downloads their content, copies it, and feeds it to an AI model. In theory, this encryption also means Proton Docs can't be exposed by data breaches. Users can share their documents with others by adding their email addresses and can revoke permissions later if desired.

Previously, Proton users could upload their files to Drive and view them on their computers or via the company's mobile Proton Drive app. But they would have to open any documents in a third-party app to edit them and then re-upload them afterward. In the era of Google Drive, this feels old-school and could make it harder to stay organized when working on longer-timeline projects with frequent edits and additions.

Is Proton Docs a viable Google Docs competitor? Not for everyone—yet. A quick PCMag test of Proton's new Docs feature shows that it still has some kinks to work out. While Proton Drive displays an accurate, complete preview of an 80-page .docx file, actually opening it in Docs shows some big losses in the conversion. The font and line spacing are changed, chunks of text are missing, headers and footers have been lost entirely, page breaks are ignored, and tab-key indents have been removed.

Proton tells PCMag it's working on fixes for the formatting issues. "We are aware of display issues with existing .docx files with extensive formatting and are working on updates and improvements to how these files are imported," a Proton rep said via email.

PCMag also tested uploading and opening a shorter .docx document and found that while all the text was retained on this uploaded document, strikethrough formatting was removed as well as H1 heading formatting. Apple Pages files are not supported at all, and Proton does not yet have a solution for viewing Excel-style documents, either.

"Everything that Google's got is on our roadmap," the Proton spokesperson tells PCMag. "But order matters and .docx support is a natural place to start as it’s the most commonly used format. In the future, we'll look at adding other functionalities to enhance the user experience."

For now, Proton Docs users will likely find the fewest conversion issues with .txt files when trying to move work over to the encrypted platform. Testing the same 80-page .docx file as a .txt showed no apparent losses or changes in a conversion test. Creating new documents from scratch is also an option to get the formatting look you want, of course.

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While Proton's Docs feature isn't perfect, the company has been refreshingly transparent about its commitment to user privacy in the face of industry AI hype. Unlike Google, which is adding its Gemini AI across its Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides as a sidebar to review all your data to help answer questions and generate text and graphics, Proton isn't trying to add AI to its products. Proton's Drive feature, for example, indexes files locally on your device so you can search through your files (Google wants you to use Gemini to help you search your Drive).

"You should be free to work on drafts without your data being collected, scanned, and abused for profit," Proton's website states.

The Swiss firm's first product was its encrypted email, Proton Mail. Since then, it's added a Calendar, Drive, VPN, and password manager features, and acquired the encrypted note-taking app Standard Notes earlier this year.