Privacy Policy

What this is

Told is an AI wellness companion for your inner life. You speak, Told listens and remembers what matters to you, and over time helps you see the shape of what you’ve been holding. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and the choices you have.

What we collect

Account information. Your name and email address when you sign in with Google.

Voice recordings. Audio from your sessions, recorded with your explicit consent at the start of each session.

Transcripts and reflections. Text derived from your recordings, including transcriptions, extracted facts, and AI-generated reflections.

Emotional tone data. During and after sessions, acoustic characteristics of your voice (such as tone, pace, and emphasis) are analyzed to help the AI respond more naturally. This data is used internally and is not shown to you as emotional interpretations.

Usage data. Session duration, feature interactions, and technical diagnostics to keep the service running well.

Voice data and biometric information

Your voice recordings may be used to create a voice model that captures the unique characteristics of your speech — your tone, cadence, accent, and vocal identity. This constitutes biometric data under certain state laws, including the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (CUBI).

What we create. A digital voice model derived from your accumulated conversation audio.

Why. To maintain voice recognition quality across sessions and support the pattern detection capabilities of your Living Portrait.

Your consent. We will obtain your explicit consent before creating a voice model from your recordings. You may withdraw this consent at any time through your account settings.

Retention. Voice models are retained for as long as your account is active. If you withdraw consent or delete your account, your voice model will be permanently destroyed within 30 days.

No sale or commercial use. Your voice data and voice models are never sold, leased, traded, or used for any purpose other than powering your Living Portrait.

How your data is processed

Real-time conversation. During a session your audio streams through LiveKit (WebRTC infrastructure) to Deepgram (speech-to-text). An AI hosted by OpenAI guides the conversation, and Cartesia converts its replies to speech. We have opted out of model training with every provider that offers the option.

Post-session processing. After a session, your transcript is sent to Anthropic for fact extraction and reflection generation, and to Voyage AI for semantic embeddings that power contextual search. These models do not retain your data after processing.

Emotional analysis

During the processing of your conversation audio, we analyze acoustic properties of your voice — such as tone, pace, pauses, and emphasis — to understand emotional context. This analysis is performed using LiveKit's audio processing pipeline as part of the real-time conversation infrastructure.

This emotional analysis is used solely as an internal signal to help the AI conduct more natural, empathetic conversations. It is not displayed to you as emotional labels or interpretations. We do not tell you "you sounded sad" — we use these signals to inform how the AI responds.

Notifications and re-engagement

TOLD may send you notifications to surface pattern insights from your Living Portrait — for example, "A pattern you discussed three months ago has resurfaced in recent sessions."

Consent. We will ask for your explicit permission before sending any notifications. You can enable or disable notifications at any time in your account settings.

Preferences. You can control which types of notifications you receive and mark specific sessions as private (excluded from pattern surfacing).

Sensitivity. We apply filters to avoid resurfacing content associated with emotional distress. Recent conversations (less than 30 days old) are never resurfaced.

Third-party processors

Your data is processed by the following services, each under a data processing agreement:

• LiveKit — real-time audio transport
• Deepgram — speech-to-text transcription
• OpenAI — conversational AI during sessions
• Cartesia — text-to-speech synthesis
• Anthropic — fact extraction and reflection generation
• Voyage AI — semantic search embeddings
• ElevenLabs — voice model creation and voice processing (when enabled)

Where your data is stored

Your recordings and all derived data are stored on servers in the United States using Amazon Web Services. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit.

How long we keep it

Your recordings and conversation data are kept for as long as your account is active. If you delete your account, we will delete your recordings and personal data within 30 days. Anonymized usage statistics may be retained.

Voice models (biometric data). Voice models are retained for as long as your account is active and you have not withdrawn consent for voice modeling. Upon account deletion or consent withdrawal, voice models are permanently destroyed within 30 days. We do not retain biometric data beyond this period.

Your rights

You can request a copy of your data, ask us to correct inaccuracies, or delete your account and all associated data at any time. California residents have additional rights under the CCPA, including the right to know what personal information is collected and the right to opt out of its sale — we do not sell your personal information.

In-app deletion. You can permanently delete your account and every conversation tied to it from inside the app: open Settings, scroll to Delete account, and confirm. Deletion is immediate and irreversible. Audio storage cleanup completes within 24 hours.

Biometric data rights. If you are a resident of Illinois, Texas, Washington, or another state with biometric privacy laws, you have additional rights regarding your voice data, including the right to be informed before collection, the right to consent to or refuse collection, and the right to have your biometric data destroyed. Contact us at hello@told.one to exercise these rights.

Children

TOLD is designed for adults. Only adults (18+) may create accounts and use the service.

Disclaimers

Wellness, not psychotherapy. Told is a wellness companion. It is not psychotherapy and is not a substitute for licensed mental health care. If you are in crisis, please contact a qualified professional or your local emergency services.

Recording. Voice conversations are recorded so Told can listen, remember, and be ready for next time. You can delete any conversation at any time from Settings. See "What we collect" above for the full retention policy.

Text mode. When you choose text instead of voice, you are talking to the Told text companion. This is a different experience from the voice conversations described above and uses a different processing pipeline.

How the AI is guided

Told's AI follows a written set of instructions every time you speak with it. We share the gist here so you know what to expect.

What the AI is asked to do. Listen, reflect what it heard, and ask open questions. Remember what matters across conversations. Keep the conversation focused on what you brought up — not on advice or interpretation.

What the AI is asked NOT to do. No diagnosis. No treatment plans. No clinical labels. No "you sound sad" emotion call-outs. No personality reads. If you bring up a crisis — thoughts of harming yourself or someone else — the AI will pause, name its limits, and point you to a real person (such as the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States).

Memory and pattern observations. Told remembers what you tell it. Over time it may notice patterns across conversations and mention them — at most once per conversation, stated as observation, not interpretation. You can delete any conversation at any time from Settings.

Quiet by design. The AI carries a lot of context about you but speaks sparingly. Long silences are allowed. The goal is for you to feel heard, not analyzed.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. If we make meaningful changes, we will notify you by email or through the app before they take effect.

Contact

Questions or requests? Reach us at hello@told.one.