Privacy policy

Who we are

AiMe is run by NAMAIS Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 15106217. Our registered office is 94 Coniscliffe Road, Darlington, Co Durham, DL3 7RW, United Kingdom. We are the data controller for the personal data described here.

You can reach us about anything in this policy at [email protected].

What we collect, and when

When you ask for an invite on aime.photo we take your name, your email address and your mobile number. The form also runs a bot check from Cloudflare called Turnstile, which sees your IP address and some details about your browser. We use the name and email to send your invite and to keep the waiting list in order. We store the mobile number but do not use it yet. We asked for it so that, when your invite comes, we can set up sign-in by text message for you.

When you sign in we use your email address and your mobile number. You get a six-digit code by text message, sent by our sign-in provider, Supabase, through Twilio. The code never passes through our own servers. If you choose to sign in by email instead, you get a link by email. We record whether your email address and your mobile number have been confirmed.

When you use your account we hold your first and last name as you give them, a handle if you choose one, whether you have made your pictures public, the booths you belong to, and any booths you have created with their names and settings.

When you accept our terms we record which version you accepted and when. We ask again if the terms change.

In each booth you belong to we record the newest wall picture you have looked at, so we can show how many new ones are waiting. Only you see that number. We also keep how many notifications a day you want from each booth, and how many we have sent you today.

To choose what shows in your For you feed we keep a private score of how connected you are to each person you have dealt with in AiMe: emoji you gave or got, and invites by email. It fades by half every two weeks. Nobody sees it, you included, and it is only used to choose and order your feed.

When you put an emoji on a picture we keep which emoji, on which picture, and that it was you. Other members of the booth see how many of each emoji a picture has, not who added them. It stays until you take it off or the picture is deleted.

When a booth owner invites you by email, we hold your email address, the booth it is for, who invited you, when, and whether you accepted or declined. We send you one email to tell you. The invite shows in the app once you sign in with that address confirmed. If you invite someone, make sure they are happy to hear from us.

When you take a picture we hold the selfie you took, the picture the AI made from it, which world you chose, when you took it, a brightness reading from the camera so we can warn you about low light, and the name you were using at the time. If your camera does not work, the page offers a file picker instead, so a "selfie" can also be a photo you already had on your phone.

When you turn on notifications we hold the subscription your browser gives us, which is a web address and two keys that let us send messages to that browser, together with a short description of the browser. We hold up to ten of these per person.

When you use a booth at an event by scanning its code, without an account, we hold the name you type, a random identifier for your phone so that only you can post or delete your pictures, and the pictures you take.

On your own phone, your browser keeps a copy of your recent pictures (up to forty per booth), your preferences such as whether the flash is on, and the identifiers above. These stay on your phone and we cannot see them. Clearing your browser data removes them.

Our servers also see your IP address. We use it to limit how often one address can call the service, which protects everyone from abuse. Those counts live in memory for a few minutes and are not written down. Our error reporting tool, Sentry, may receive technical details when something goes wrong, so that we can fix it.

How the AI picture is made

To make your picture we send your selfie, together with a fixed description of the world you chose, to fal.ai, an AI image service. fal.ai runs the model and returns the finished picture, which we download and store. We write every description ourselves. You cannot type your own prompt, and nothing you type reaches the model.

We send the selfie as a temporary web address rather than attaching the file. That temporary copy is deleted as soon as the model has answered, whether or not the picture worked. fal.ai processes the image in order to make the picture, under its own terms. We have not asked fal.ai to keep your selfie or the picture, and we do not use your pictures to train anything.

The model is asked to keep everyone who is in the selfie, with their skin tone and features, and to change only the clothes, the place and the era. It does not always obey. Sometimes a face changes, or a person comes out a different age or gender. That is how this kind of model behaves, and it is part of what people enjoy about AiMe, but if a picture upsets you, delete it and tell us.

After each picture we run a second automatic check that compares the result with your selfie, person by person: skin colour, ethnicity, hair texture, sex and age, and whether it is still recognisably you. For that check the selfie and the new picture are sent, again through fal.ai, to a vision model made by Google, which answers only yes or no on each point; nothing it says is kept with your picture beyond whether it passed. If any of those has changed we make the picture again with firmer instructions, and if it changes again we refuse that picture rather than show it. The check is another AI model and can itself be wrong, so if a picture still looks wrong to you, delete it and tell us.

An organiser who runs a booth at an event can upload a few photos of up to five people, with their first names, so that guests see sample pictures before they start. Those photos and names are sent to fal.ai in the same way as a selfie.

Why we are allowed to use your data

UK data protection law asks us to say which legal basis we rely on. These are ours.

• Performing our agreement with you: making your account, sending your invite, making and storing your pictures, running your booths.
• Your consent: using your camera, sending you notifications, and making a booth or your pictures public. You can withdraw each of these in the app at any time.
• Our legitimate interests: keeping the service safe, limiting abuse, fixing faults, understanding how the test is going, and improving the worlds we offer. We weigh these against your interests and do not use your data in ways you would not expect.
• Legal obligations: keeping records we are required to keep, and answering lawful requests.

Who can see your pictures

A new picture is seen by nobody but you. Nothing is shared until you choose to post it.

• If you post a picture to a booth wall, the other members of that booth can see it, with your first name beside it.
• A booth is private when it is created. If its owner makes it public, anyone who has its address can see the wall, including people who are not signed in.
• If you turn on "pictures public" on your own page, anyone who has your page address can see the pictures you have posted. Pictures from a private booth never show there.
• At an event booth, a picture you post goes to the event screen and the event gallery, where other guests see it.
• When you save or share a picture, it goes wherever you send it. Pictures from your own booths carry a small AiMe mark unless the booth owner has turned it off. Pictures from an event booth do not.

Pictures and selfies are stored as files at long, random web addresses that are not listed anywhere. Anyone who has a picture's exact address can open it, which is what lets you share it. The selfie has a different random address that we never show in the app. The organiser of an event booth can reach the selfies taken in that booth through their event tools.

We do not sell your data and we do not show advertising.

Who else handles your data

These companies process data for us, on our instructions, to run AiMe.

• Supabase: our database, file storage and sign-in. Hosted on Amazon Web Services in London.
• Twilio: sends the sign-in code to your mobile, on behalf of Supabase.
• fal.ai: runs the AI model that makes your picture, in the United States.
• SendGrid, owned by Twilio: sends our emails, such as your invite.
• Cloudflare: the Turnstile bot check on the invite form, and the domain name service for aime.photo.
• Apple, Google, Mozilla and Microsoft: deliver notifications to your browser, if you turn them on. The content of each notification is encrypted so that they cannot read it.
• Sentry: collects error reports so that we can fix faults.

Some of these companies are outside the United Kingdom, including in the United States. Where that happens we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses, or on an adequacy decision, so that your data has the same protection as at home.

We also share data when the law requires it, or to protect someone's safety or our rights. If NAMAIS Ltd is sold or merged, your data would pass to the new owner under this policy.

How long we keep it

• Selfies and pictures: until you delete the picture, or until we remove your account. Deleting a picture deletes the selfie it was made from.
• Your account and profile: for as long as you have an account.
• Waiting list details: until you have joined, or until the test ends, or until you ask us to remove them.
• Invite links: a waiting-list invite link works for fourteen days and once only. A link that a booth owner shares works for thirty days.
• Invites by email: thirty days if nobody answers. Once answered, we keep the answer for as long as the booth exists.
• Your acceptance of the terms: for as long as you have an account.
• Notification subscriptions: until you turn notifications off, or until your browser tells us the subscription has gone.
• IP address counts: a few minutes, in memory only.
• Error reports and server logs: a short period, set by the tools that hold them, and then deleted.
• Copies on your own phone: until you clear your browser data.

Your choices and your rights

In the app you can delete any of your pictures, which also deletes the selfie. You can unpost a picture so that it leaves the wall. You can leave a booth; your pictures stay until you delete them. You can turn notifications off, and you can make your pictures private again. Booth owners can block a member and make a booth private again.

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask for a copy of your data, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to limit or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it at any time.

During the test there is no button to delete your account. Email [email protected] from the address on your account and we will remove your pictures, your booths and your details. We normally do this within a day, and always within one month, which is the time the law allows.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would like the chance to put it right first, so please tell us too.

Children

AiMe is not aimed at children under 13 and we do not knowingly hold their data. If you think a child under 13 has used AiMe, tell us and we will delete the data.

At an event booth, children may be in a group selfie. The organiser must make sure that a parent or guardian has agreed to this before the picture is taken.

Security

Everything between your phone and our servers is encrypted. The invite links we email are stored as hashes, so a copy of our database would not reveal them. Only our own servers can read the waiting list. Access to the systems that hold your data is limited to the people who need it. No system is perfectly secure, so we also keep the amount of data we hold small and delete what we no longer need.

Cookies and similar tools

Signing in sets a cookie that keeps you signed in. The app uses your browser's local storage and its small on-device database for the copies and preferences described above. The Turnstile bot check may set a cookie of Cloudflare's own. We do not use advertising cookies, and we do not run analytics on aime.photo during the test.

Changes to this policy

When we change what AiMe does with your data we will change this page and move the date at the top. If a change affects you in a way you would not expect, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.