Kiyo Privacy Policy
Effective: 31 October 2026 · Who we are: Jayant Chauhan ("Kiyo", "we") · Contact: jayant@kiyo.life
The short version
- We never train AI on your voice or your words. We don't sell your data, show ads or use analytics or tracking tools.
- AI reads what you record, type and say in chat so Kiyo can transcribe, remember and reply. Google and Anthropic run those AI services for us. Some of that processing happens outside India: speech-to-text in the United States, journal analysis anywhere in Google's network, and chat on Anthropic's servers.
- Your journal is backed up to Kiyo's database in Mumbai, India, once you sign in and agree. Recordings stay on your phone. We send them to Google only so they can be turned into text.
- Private chats are still sent to the AI so Kiyo can answer. Kiyo never adds them to its memory.
- You can delete an entry, something Kiyo remembers, or your whole account from inside the app.
- Kiyo is not an emergency or medical service. If you may be at risk, Kiyo shows helplines for your country, but it cannot call anyone for you.
1. What we collect
Your account. You sign in with Apple or Google. That service tells us an account ID and may share your name and email address (Apple lets you hide your email). Our sign-in system (Google Cloud Identity Platform) keeps your email with your account. Our own database stores your account ID, not your email.
Your name. This is the name you give Kiyo during setup. Kiyo uses it to talk to you and to tell you apart from the people you mention. It is sent to the AI models along with your entries and chats.
Your journal. This covers:
- what you record or type
- the transcript, title and summary Kiyo writes for each entry
- the mood and feelings you pick, or that Kiyo picks out
- the people, places and things you mention
- what Kiyo learns about your life from all of the above: its memory
- your answers to Kiyo's questions
Your recordings. These are audio files of what you say.
Your chats with Kiyo. This includes your messages and Kiyo's replies.
A few settings and technical details. These are:
- your time zone and language
- the date you finished setup, and which version of our consent wording you agreed to
- an ID for the one phone that backs up your account
- your phone's country setting, which Kiyo uses to choose helplines
Usage counts. We count how many chat messages you send each day, because there is a daily limit. We also record timings and error types so we can keep the service working.
Connections you choose. Kiyo can ask for access to Apple Health (sleep, steps, workouts), your Calendar and Gmail (read only). All three are optional and off by default. Today Kiyo reads nothing from them and sends nothing from them anywhere. Before Kiyo starts using any of them, we will update this policy and tell you in the app.
What we don't collect: your contacts, your precise location, advertising IDs or payment details. There is no analytics, crash-reporting or advertising software in the app.
2. How Kiyo uses AI, and who runs it
Nothing leaves your phone for analysis or backup until you tap Agree and continue on the "Before you start" screen.
| What | Who runs it | Where | What it receives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turning recordings into text | Google Cloud Speech-to-Text | United States | The recording, and names you've mentioned before, so it spells them right. Recordings longer than about 5 minutes are not sent. Your phone also makes its own transcript with Apple's on-device speech recognition. |
| Understanding entries: title, summary, mood, feelings, people, memory | Google's Gemini, on Google Cloud (Vertex AI) | Any Google Cloud region worldwide | Your entries, your name, and earlier passages from your journal when Kiyo checks how something fits |
| Meaning search: finding entries by what they mean, not just their words | Google's embedding model, on Google Cloud (Vertex AI) | Mumbai, India | Your entries, which are turned into lists of numbers and stored with your journal, and each chat question, which is turned into numbers only for that search |
| Chat replies, and the safety check on every chat message | Anthropic's Claude, through Anthropic's own service | Outside India | Your message, the conversation so far, your name, what Kiyo remembers about you, and the journal passages it finds for your question |
We may also run chat on Google's Gemini, on Google Cloud, instead of Claude.
Google. Recordings of about 1 to 5 minutes are held briefly in a Google Cloud storage space in the United States while they are transcribed. We delete them as soon as the text is back, and any copy left there is deleted automatically within a day. Google keeps its own record of each transcription job for about 5 days, and we cannot delete that record early.
Anthropic. Anthropic's business terms say it doesn't train its models on what we send. It deletes that data from its systems within 30 days. The exceptions: it may keep a message for up to 2 years if its safety systems flag it, or for longer if the law requires.
Training. Kiyo never trains AI models on your voice or your words. We use these services under their business terms, which don't let them use your data to train their models. We may move to another provider that gives the same protection. If we do, we will update this policy before your data goes there.
The servers that connect your phone to these services run on Google Cloud in Mumbai, India.
3. Your cloud backup
Once you sign in and agree, Kiyo backs up your journal and chats, including private chats, to its database on Google Cloud in Mumbai, India. That lets you get your journal back on a new phone. The backup holds everything in "Your journal" and "Your chats" above, plus your name. It does not hold your email or your recordings.
Recordings are not backed up. They stay on your phone until you delete the entry. If you delete the app or lose your phone, your recordings are gone. The text of your journal can still be restored.
4. Chat
- Memory. When you finish a chat, Kiyo reads what you said in it, the same way it reads an entry, and can add to its memory of your life. If you ask Kiyo in chat to correct something it remembers, your phone makes the change. Kiyo's chat cannot edit or delete your entries.
- Private chats. Private chats are still sent to Claude so Kiyo can answer. They are never added to Kiyo's memory and never used for meaning search. Kiyo's chat service keeps no copy of its replies or a summary. Private chats are in your cloud backup like the rest of your journal.
- Daily limit. You can send up to 100 messages a day. If a message looks like you may be at risk, Kiyo answers it even after you reach the limit.
- If you may be at risk. Kiyo checks every chat message for signs that you or someone else may be in danger. If it finds them, it answers with care, asks whether you are safe and shows helplines for your country. We don't keep a separate record that a message was flagged, and Kiyo never contacts anyone on your behalf. Kiyo is an AI, not a therapist, a doctor or an emergency service. In an emergency, call your local emergency number.
5. How long we keep things
- Your journal, chats and backup are kept until you delete them or your account. Nothing expires on its own.
- Recordings stay on your phone until you delete the entry.
- Database backups. Google Cloud keeps daily copies of our database for 7 days, so we can recover from a failure. Anything you delete is gone from those copies within 7 days.
- Server logs keep IDs, timings, token counts, error types and the internet address each request came from. They never keep the text of your entries or chats. They are kept for about 30 days.
- Google and Anthropic keep data only as described in section 2.
6. Deleting your data
- An entry: delete it in the app. This removes its text, its recording and its meaning-search numbers from your phone, and from the backup the next time your phone syncs. Something Kiyo learned from that entry stays in Kiyo's memory, marked as no longer current. To make Kiyo stop using it, use Profile → Your memory → Not right.
- Something Kiyo remembers: use Profile → Your memory.
- Your account: use Profile → Delete account. This deletes everything we hold for you in our database, including your chats and meaning-search numbers. It also deletes your sign-in account, cancels the link to your Apple sign-in if you used one, and erases Kiyo's data on your phone. What remains afterwards: the 7-day database backups and 30-day logs in section 5, and whatever Google and Anthropic still hold under section 2.
- A single chat, or anything you can't delete yourself: email jayant@kiyo.life. We will delete it within 30 days.
7. Your rights
You can ask us to:
- give you a copy of your data
- correct it
- delete it
- explain how we use it
You can also withdraw your consent. Stopping the AI processing means deleting your account, because Kiyo can't work without it. Email jayant@kiyo.life and we will reply within 30 days. If you are in India, you may also nominate someone to act for you, and complain to the Data Protection Board of India if we don't resolve your concern. Our grievance contact is Jayant Chauhan, jayant@kiyo.life.
8. Who can see your data
We don't sell or share your data with anyone except the services in section 2, and only to run Kiyo. Only the founder can access our database, only to keep the service running or fix a problem you report, and never to read your entries otherwise. We will disclose data if the law requires it. We will tell you first unless the law forbids it.
9. Security
- Every request from the app goes over an encrypted connection.
- Your sign-in is stored in your phone's Keychain, the encrypted storage iOS keeps for passwords, and it is never copied to another device.
- Our database checks, on every row, that only your own account can reach your data. Google encrypts it on disk.
- Our servers turn away any request that doesn't carry valid app credentials.
- No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
10. Age
Kiyo is for people aged 18 and over.
11. Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If a change affects how your data is used or where it goes, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
12. Contact
Jayant Chauhan · jayant@kiyo.life