Privacy policy

Tisai is a guide to places built from what people who know them have shared. This page explains, in plain language, what we collect, who helps us handle it, and the choices you have. We do not sell personal information, we do not show ads, and we do not track you across other apps or websites. Tisai is run by Gold Rush 1849 LLC, 2830 W Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216, USA ("we").

Your account

You do not need to sign up. The first time you open Tisai, the app makes a random code on your phone, and that code is your account. We do not ask for your email or phone number. If you choose to, you can add a first name and a username.

What we collect

• What you ask. Your questions, the answers Tisai gave, and whether you said an answer helped.
• What you share. Your stories, the tips found in them, your journal pages, comments, and answers you give to other people's questions.
• Your voice. When you talk instead of typing, your voice is turned into text. On iPhone, Apple's speech service usually does this, and on Android, your phone's own speech service (usually Google's); for some languages, such as Uzbek, the recording goes to our server and to ElevenLabs to be written down instead. When you tell a story by voice, the recording is kept with it as a voice note. Your friends hear it only if you switch that on.
• Photos and videos. Photos you add to a story or take in Tisai, and videos of up to 90 seconds (3 minutes for someone with a guide the team approved) you add from your phone's library or record in Tisai. We remove the location stored inside a photo before it is uploaded. A video is made smaller on your phone, and its location and the other notes your camera wrote into it are removed there, before it is uploaded. Videos are converted and streamed by Mux: your phone sends the video file to Mux, which makes the copies that play in the app and stores them. Before people who are not your friends can see a video, it is checked: still pictures taken from it (one every two seconds), and the words spoken in it, which are sent to ElevenLabs to be written down and then read the way a voice note's words are. You choose for each video whether everyone or only your friends may see it. If Tisai does not allow a video, you can ask our team once to look at it again, with one line saying why; only our team reads that line, and it is checked the way other words you write are. If you delete a video, or your account, its copies at Mux are deleted too. The video itself is never used to answer anyone's questions. Tisai can also look through your photo library on your phone, if you allow it, to suggest a day as a story; nothing leaves your phone until you add a photo or a video to a story.
• Calendar. If you allow it, Tisai reads your calendar on your phone to suggest a dinner or a trip as a story. If you tell that story, only the event's place goes with it, never the event itself.
• Location. With your permission, where you are while the app is open, so Tisai can show places near you and pin a picture you take to where you are standing. You can use Tisai without it by choosing an area yourself.
• Your taste. From how you ask, Tisai keeps a short note such as "traveling with two young kids, prefers quiet places" so it can pick tips that suit you. It never records sensitive traits such as religion, health, ethnicity, sexuality or politics. You can read it and erase it at any time in Settings.
• Friends. The people you connect with through an invite link.
• What you tap. Which posts and places you open or save, so the feed can show more of what you like.
• Technical data. Your device type, app version, error and crash reports, and a code that lets us send you notifications if you allow them.

How we use it

To answer your questions, to turn what people say into tips, to keep your journal, to show your posts to the people you chose, to check content for advertising, personal data and anything unsafe before others see it, to prevent abuse, and to keep the app working. We count which tips helped answer a question so contributors can see their impact.

Who sees what you share

Your tips can appear in answers to other people. People you do not know see your username, never your name. Friends see your first name and the posts you share with them. A journal page is private unless you share its link; anyone with a shared link can read it, and it shows the name you chose. Please do not include personal details about other people; content with personal data is declined.

Your page, guides and following

Anyone who opens your page in Tisai sees your username and avatar, the tips you shared with everyone, and your guides once a person at Tisai has approved them. It also shows the "Who I am" line and the languages you speak, if you write them in Settings, and whether you live or work in the city you know best and since when, from what you told Tisai when you started. A guide holds only your own tips shared with everyone, with the title, introduction and notes you write. Other people can follow you: you see how many follow you, never who, and they are told when a new guide of yours goes live. Someone reading your guide can ask you about it: you see their username and avatar, never their name, and only they see your answer. We note when someone opens a person's page or a guide, and from where (for example from an answer or from Explore), to learn whether these pages help people; nobody else sees this. If you delete your account, who you follow and who follows you, the questions you asked and the pages you opened are erased, and your guides leave every page at once; their text and the answers you gave to questions are kept, marked removed and never shown again.

Who helps us run Tisai

We send each service only what it needs to do its job:

• Anthropic (Claude, the AI that reads questions and stories, finds tips, writes answers and journal pages, and checks content and photos before they go live). Anthropic does not train its models on this content.
• ElevenLabs (turns some recordings, and the words spoken in a video you add, into text, and can read answers aloud).
• Mux (stores and streams the videos you add; it receives the video file and nothing about you).
• Apple (speech recognition, maps and addresses, notifications).
• Voyage AI (helps match a question to the tips that answer it, from the text of both).
• Perplexity and Google (when nobody has covered a question, they receive its text and the area, without your identity, to find what is online for the card marked "Here's what's online").

Map pictures, place search and free place photos come from Apple, Google Places, OpenStreetMap, OpenFreeMap and Wikimedia Commons; they see place names, map positions and, when your phone loads a picture, your internet address, never your identity. The weather on a page you write comes from Open-Meteo, which receives your spot rounded to about a kilometre, never your identity. Our database, photos and voice notes are stored with Supabase in the United States; crash reports go to Sentry; our website runs on Cloudflare.

We may disclose information if the law requires it.

How long we keep it

We keep what you share while your account is open. A story you delete goes to Recently deleted, where you can bring it back or erase it for good. Tips stay in the guide until you remove them or they go out of date.

Your choices

• Read and erase what Tisai has learned about your taste.
• Remove a tip, a post or a journal page, and stop sharing a journal link.
• Turn off location, photos, calendar, microphone or notifications at any time in your phone's Settings.
• Delete your account in the app: Me, then Settings, then Delete my account. This erases your questions, your taste note, your journal pages, photos, voice notes and friends, and takes your tips out of the guide. The text of a removed tip is kept without your name, because answers other people already received were built from it. Your guides and your answers to questions about them are kept the same way, marked removed and never shown. The steps, what is kept, and how to ask by email if you can't use the app are on Delete your account.

Depending on where you live, you may also have legal rights to access, correct or delete your information; we honor those requests from everyone. Write to hello@tisai.app.

Children

Tisai is not for children under 13. You must be 13 or older to use Tisai or to share anything in it.

Changes and contact

If this policy changes in a way that matters, we will say so in the app. Questions: hello@tisai.app, or by post to Gold Rush 1849 LLC, 2830 W Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216, USA.