A novel privacy-focused AI assistant named “Leo” has been introduced on the Android platform of its browser in the latest release, version 1.63, marking Brave Software’s entry into this domain.
Leo boasts a diverse skill set, ranging from coding and creating excerpts from audio or video clips to generating written content, answering queries on specific topics, translating websites, and summarizing web content or videos.
Accessing the AI functionalities is simple—just tap the “star” icon to summon the assistant and select the “Leo” option in the on-page chat list to initiate a conversation.
The service allows usage across five different devices on supported platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android) with a free basic tier and a premium subscription priced at $14.99 per month.
Brave’s AI assistant distinguishes itself by leveraging advanced large-language models (LLMs) such as Mixtral 8x7B, Claude Instant, and Llama 2 13B, with Mixtral serving as the default choice for its multilingual capabilities and superior performance. This selection ensures that Leo delivers high-quality responses with minimal errors.
The integration of AI tools on mobile devices has revolutionized the user experience, albeit raising concerns regarding data privacy as these tools often operate continuously in the background, monitoring user interactions with information and services.
In this context, Brave assures users that Leo is designed with robust privacy safeguards, offering the benefits of AI tools while prioritizing user privacy.
Key privacy protection measures include:
- User anonymity is maintained as no Brave account login is required for Leo’s free tier.
- Leo does not retain or utilize customer conversations for product enhancement.
- User IDs and requests are kept separate through an anonymization layer.
- Leo’s actions are promptly deleted from Brave’s servers, with Anthropic model-related data erased after 30 days.
- No personal identifiers, including online aliases, are gathered or stored.
- Premium Leo users providing private tokens for account verification are not linked to their payment details.
The rollout of Leo for Brave browser users on Android via version 1.63 will be gradual, potentially requiring a few days for full availability despite updating to the latest version. Additionally, Brave has announced the impending launch of Brave Leo for iOS (iPhone) in the upcoming weeks, ensuring Apple users can soon benefit from this innovative AI assistant.
