vs ChatGPT

Some documents can’t go into ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is excellent, but it is a third party.

Muet does the same kind of work on your Mac, with no third party involved.

The short version

ChatGPT processes your prompts and documents on OpenAI’s servers; Muet processes them on your Mac. For most work that is a matter of preference. For confidential work it decides whether you can use AI at all.

What changed in May 2025

A US federal court in NYT v. OpenAI ordered OpenAI to preserve conversations users had deleted, including those covered by ChatGPT Plus, Team, Free, and most API tiers. Enterprise was excluded; almost everyone else wasn’t. OpenAI’s CEO has since called publicly for an “AI privilege,” which by definition means none exists today.

For a lawyer, accountant, or clinician, that reframes the question: the vendor doesn’t have to want to keep your data, because a court can compel it to.

How the two compare on the things that matter

  • Where the document goes. ChatGPT: to OpenAI’s infrastructure. Muet: nowhere; it stays on your Mac.
  • Where the prompt goes. ChatGPT: logged on OpenAI’s servers. Muet: never leaves the device.
  • Retention. ChatGPT: 30 days by default, longer under legal hold or training opt-in. Muet: none, because we have no servers that touch your work.
  • Discoverable in litigation. ChatGPT: yes. OpenAI can be subpoenaed and was, in May 2025. Muet: there is nothing to discover.
  • Sub-processors. ChatGPT: multiple, named in OpenAI’s DPA. Muet: none.
  • DPA required. ChatGPT: yes, if you’re processing personal data under GDPR. Muet: no, because we’re not a processor.
  • Works offline. ChatGPT: no. Muet: yes, once activated and the model is downloaded, for up to 14 days between licence checks.
  • Price. ChatGPT Plus: $20/month. Muet: $390/year per device, one annual invoice.

Most professionals use both

ChatGPT is fast, broad, and cheap. For the eighty per cent of work that is fine to send away (brainstorming, public-facing writing, general questions, drafts about no one’s real situation) it is the right tool, and we use it ourselves.

Muet exists for the twenty per cent that has to stay put: a privileged communication, a patient record, a target-company data room, an unblinded trial, an internal investigation, a pre-patent disclosure, an unredacted exhibit, or a financial statement with real names. For that work, “the vendor doesn’t train on it” isn’t enough, because the data still leaves your machine and a court can still reach it.

The realistic setup is both: cloud AI for the public eighty and Muet for the confidential twenty.

What Muet does

  • Reads PDFs, Word documents, Excel and CSV, plain text, scanned images.
  • Answers questions and summarises within a document.
  • Writes tracked-change redlines back into Word.
  • Anonymises in one pass, saving a clean copy with no tracked changes, comments, or metadata.
  • Translates between languages without sending the document anywhere.
  • Picks the strongest model your Mac can run, and updates it as better local models ship.
  • Gains new workflows continually through updates.

Try it

Pricing

$390per Mac, per year

A 30-day money-back guarantee and one licence per device, easy to expense. Requires Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 15 or newer.

Get Muet →