Because of privacy concerns, I have been reluctant to use LLMs. I started experimenting in 2023 because I realized this is going to come either way - and I can make use of it, or be left behind.
I started with ChatGPT, as everyone does, but soon stopped using it for political and privacy reasons. Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, is also a co-founder of the Worldcoin project. Worldcoin is a cryptocurrency that requires individuals to scan their iris to identify themselves. They have been rolling out their product aggressively on the African continent by paying anyone who signed up $25 in exchange for their biometric data. In Kenya, Worldcoin became the subject of a 2025 court case and was rightfully instructed to delete all data.
I don’t want to share my data with companies showing no regard for dignity and privacy, and taking advantage of unequal bargaining situations.
So no ChatGPT for me.
Claude was the first tool I used on a regular basis. Since I understood that if you use the free plan on ChatGPT your conversations might end up in Google Search - and this might be the same with other models - I decided to subscribe to a paid plan on Claude.
I am using it with a nym (a fake name and email), but of course my payment data is still associated with my account. That’s why I was looking for more private options.
The point for me is simple: I want to use AI, but I want to choose the terms. I don’t want “convenience” to mean “total surveillance.”
PayPerQ allows you to pay with Lightning Bitcoin, which increases your privacy because your real name is not associated with your searches. It offers a variety of LLMs for chat, image, video, audio, and DeepResearch, which makes it easy to experiment. At the same time, it increases the number of my experiments, because I want to know what different models produce and what is best.
I think it is essential to find out which tools are the right ones for your needs. Honestly, I haven’t found mine yet.
I like Claude Sonnet 4.5 for editing texts. DeepResearch is incredible for doing what its name says, although the depth of results can be overwhelming. Z.AI: GLM 4.7 was great for strategic thinking, but then it failed my expectations in text editing.
PayPerQ hides your identity in the purchasing process, but your prompts and conversations still land at the companies behind the models. I am not against them learning what I ask or the corrections I make - AI makes a lot of mistakes and it has a lot to learn from us. I actually want LLMs to crawl my work, but I don’t want them to save every little thing I do and mix it up with my private questions.
Maple AI is the best solution I found. It runs on open source code and open models. It says it never uses your data to train AI, doesn’t log your chats, does zero data retention, and you can pay with Bitcoin. It offers many models (including OpenAI GPT-OSS — yes, OpenAI, but in a private way).
Maple AI states that communications are encrypted locally on your device before being transmitted, that their servers can’t read your data, and that even during processing the pipeline is designed with privacy as the priority.
I want AI as a tool, not as a trap.
Based on: Daily, AI, Tools
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