Safety and privacy: how we protect your child

The short version

• The bare minimum about your child: a first name or nickname and a birth year, never a last name, a school or an address.
• Optional photos, stripped of their metadata and deleted as soon as the character is ready, unless you choose to keep them.
• Stories written in advance and reviewed: no first name is sent to an artificial intelligence to write them, and no photo, first name or story text is ever used to train artificial intelligence tools.
• No ads, and no analytics in the family space or in child mode.
• No account for your child: a child mode protected by your PIN.
• You can delete everything, at any time, from your settings.

What we know about your child

To write their stories, we need very little: a first name or nickname, their birth year (plus the month if you like, to keep their age more accurate), which pronouns to use, the language of their stories and your parental controls. We never ask for a last name, a full date of birth, a school or an address, and we never track your child’s location.

For characters, you give a name (“Grandma Jo,” “Mr. Bunny”), how they’re connected to your child and a few words about their personality.

Your child has no account: their profile is created and managed by you, and accounts are for adults only. Each family only sees its own data, kept separate all the way down to our database.

Photos: optional and short-lived

A photo helps us draw a character who really looks like Grandpa or a big sister, but you can skip it: without a photo, the character is drawn from your description. If you do add one, after giving your consent, here’s what happens:

1. It’s shrunk in your browser before upload, then we make a clean copy without its metadata (including GPS location).
2. It’s stored privately, visible only from your family space, and reachable only through links that expire.
3. A trusted partner analyzes it to describe the person’s look (hair, eyes, glasses…), and nothing else; it never uses it to train its tools.
4. It’s deleted as soon as the character is ready, unless you choose to keep it in your settings; a photo that wasn’t used for any character is deleted within 24 hours of upload.
5. It’s never sent to an illustration service without your explicit consent (an option that is off by default), or to any service that could use it to train its tools.

You can withdraw your consent at any time: all photos are then deleted, and characters already drawn stay as they are. Only add a photo of someone with their permission, or their parents’ permission if it’s a child.

How stories are made

To be clear about the role of artificial intelligence: our stories are written in advance by our team, with the help of artificial intelligence tools, then reviewed, checked word by word by a program and watched before they join our library. When you ask for a story, it’s filled in with your child’s first name and a companion from their universe, with no artificial intelligence involved. Voices, on the other hand, are created with a speech synthesis tool, and a character’s look is worked out from your description by an artificial intelligence tool. Here are our safeguards.

• Stories written for children, reviewed and watched one by one, with every word checked by a program before they join the library.
• Intensity under control: each story is written for your child’s age and never goes beyond the level you chose (gentle by default). A story about a big moment always stays gentle.
• Your limits, respected: themes you’ve unchecked are left out, and a story that mentions a topic you’ve asked to avoid, like thunderstorms or spiders, is never offered to them.
• What’s needed, nothing more: a story is filled in on our side, with nothing sent out to write it. The service that creates the voices receives its text, first names included, and the one that works out a character’s look receives their name and your description; never your email address or account details.
• No training on your family’s data: no photo, first name, character description or story text is ever used to train artificial intelligence tools, neither by us nor by the partners who help us prepare characters, analyze photos and create voices. We never send anything about your family to a service that would train on what it receives.

Voices are created by a specialized partner, set up so that it doesn’t train on our texts; any copies it keeps are deleted as soon as the voice is saved on our side. And because no system is perfect, if a story isn’t right for your family, delete it and write to us at bonjour@childfiction.com: your feedback helps us improve our rules.

Child mode

When you hand over the screen, turn on child mode: your child only sees their own stories and universe, with big illustrated buttons, no settings and nothing about the other children in the family. Leaving child mode takes your PIN, 4 to 6 digits; after several wrong tries, only the account password works.

You decide whether they can start a new story on their own (off by default), and you can set a daily limit. Child mode is a parental control, not a vault: a child who knew your password could sign in as you. Keep it to yourself, and pick a PIN your child doesn’t know.

Where your data lives, and how it’s protected

Your family’s database and files are hosted in the European Union, and the app is served from Paris. We work with a few carefully chosen partners for preparing characters and analyzing photos, voices, sending emails and payments; they don’t use your data for their own purposes, and none of them trains on it. Our privacy policy covers these partners and the safeguards in place when data leaves the European Union.

• Files (photos, voices, images) are stored privately and only open through links that expire.
• Your account is protected: a confirmed email address is required, passwords are checked against lists of known leaked passwords, and sign-in attempts are limited.
• If our team ever needs to look at a family’s content, for example to help you, that access is recorded in an audit log, like other sensitive actions.
• No advertising cookies. On our public pages, like this one, analytics only run if you accept them, and the “Manage cookies” link at the bottom of the page lets you change your mind.

You stay in control

• Withdraw your photo consents, or choose to keep photos, at any time in your settings.
• Share a story with your loved ones through a link you create yourself and can turn off at any time. Without a link, no story ever leaves your family space.
• Delete a character: their images, voice, photos, the stories they appear in and their memories in the universe are erased.
• Delete a child’s profile: their universe, stories and the voices in them are erased.
• Delete your account: all of your family’s data, files included, is erased within minutes. This can’t be undone.
• Access your data, correct it or ask for a copy to take elsewhere: most of this happens in your settings, and for the rest, just write to us.

A family space with no sign-in for 3 years is deleted, after a warning email sent at least 30 days ahead: signing in is all it takes to keep it. Every retention period is listed in our privacy policy.

A question about your data? Write to us at bonjour@childfiction.com. You can also file a complaint with the CNIL, France’s data protection authority. For questions about ages, screen time or plans, see our FAQ.