Privacy policy

What the app collects

• An anonymous app identity. The first time you open the app it creates an anonymous account with our database provider. Using the app never requires a name, email address, phone number, age or school.
• What you make: the topics you type, the outlines and scenes written for them, and the narration audio for each scene, so you can reopen your videos later.
• Reports you send from the player: the reason you picked and a copy of the video you reported.
• If you allow notifications: your phone's push token, an address Apple or Google gives the app so it can be sent notifications (it holds no name or number). When you leave a video that is still being made, your phone asks whether Explainimals may send notifications (some Android phones allow them without asking); if they're allowed, we keep the token so we can tell you when the video is ready, or if it couldn't be made.

Your language setting stays on your phone. The app does not collect your location, contacts, photos or advertising ID, and it has no ads, analytics or tracking. Saving a video to your phone only adds that video to your photos or gallery; the app never looks at them. The first time you tap Save to phone, your phone asks whether Explainimals may add to your photos (on Android 10 to 12, this is the storage permission). If you say no, you can still share or save the video from the share sheet.

A video never needs personal details, so please don't type things like a full name, home address, school or phone number into a topic.

How it is used

Only to make your videos, keep them for you, and review reports so the app gets safer. We do not sell your data or use it for advertising.

Who processes it

These service providers process data on our behalf, only to run the app:

• Anthropic (Claude) receives your topic and outline to write the outline, design each scene and suggest how each line of narration should be said.
• Fish Audio receives each scene's narration text, with those suggestions, to create the narrator's and characters' voices.
• Supabase stores your app account, your videos, their narration audio and your reports.
• Vercel hosts our website and the service the app talks to.
• Expo (expo.dev) passes our notifications to Apple's or Google's notification service, which delivers them to your phone. They receive your phone's push token and the notification, which names your video's topic, only to deliver it.
• Remotion's software makes the video file on your phone when you tap Save to phone. Each time a video is saved to your phone, it sends Remotion (remotion.pro) a short technical request with your phone's IP address, our website's domain and whether the save worked. Remotion uses it only for its licensing. It never includes your topic, your video or any personal details.

Anthropic and Fish Audio are paid business services that process this data on our behalf. Under its terms, Anthropic does not use it to train its AI models.

Narration audio is stored at long, random web addresses so the video player can play it. Anyone who has the exact address of a clip could play it, but the addresses are not listed or searchable.

Purchases and subscriptions

The app has nothing to buy today: no subscriptions, no purchases and no sign-in. If we add them, we will update this policy before they arrive.

Children and families

Explainimals is for everyone, including children. We built it to collect as little as possible so it is safe for kids to use:

• Using it never requires a name, email address, phone number, age, location, photos or contacts.
• It has no ads, analytics, tracking, chat or social features. Nothing a child makes is published or shown to other people.
• There is nothing to buy in the app.
• Notifications, if allowed, only ever say that a video the child made is ready or could not be made: never ads, reminders or anything else.
• The anonymous app identity is used only to keep the videos made on a device for that device, never to track or profile anyone.
• Every topic is checked before a video is made. The app declines topics that are not appropriate, and answers topics about self-harm with a supportive message instead of a video.

Parents and guardians: the videos your child made are in the app's library, where you can watch them and delete any of them. To delete everything the app has stored, open Settings, then Delete my data. Because the app never knows who anyone is, we can't look up a child's data from a name or email address, so these controls on your child's device are how to review and delete it. You can also write to privacy@explainimals.com with any question about your child's data.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If we find that a child has sent us personal information, for example in a report we review, we will delete it.

Explainimals uses artificial intelligence (AI) to write and voice its videos. AI can make mistakes, so a video may sometimes get something wrong. If you see a problem, report the video from the player.

Explainimals is designed to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and similar laws. We collect only what a video needs, we never require a child to share more information than that to use the app, and we never sell personal information or use it for advertising or profiling. The anonymous app identity is used only to run the app. Parents and guardians can review their child's videos in the app and delete them, or delete everything with Delete my data, and can write to privacy@explainimals.com with any question.

How long we keep it, and how to delete it

Your videos, narration and reports are kept until you delete them. To delete one video, open it and tap the trash button. That removes the video and its narration from our servers, but a report you sent about it, with the narration of the scenes it shows, is kept until you use Delete my data. Narration that no saved video or report uses, such as narration made while the app could not save a video, is deleted automatically a few hours after it was made. To delete everything, open the app and go to Settings, then Delete my data. That removes your videos, outlines, narration audio, reports and account from our servers straight away, and the app starts fresh.

If you uninstall the app first, we can't tell which data was yours, because it is not linked to your name or email. See explainimals.com/delete-data for details.

Our servers also keep short-lived technical logs, which hold timings, error codes and random ids, never your topics. When you save a video to your phone, they also record how long it took, how it ended and your phone's model (such as "Pixel 8"), so we can make saving faster.

To keep the app fair for everyone, each device can ask for only so many outlines an hour and videos a day. For that we note when your device asked, never what about, and delete each note after a day.

When your device makes a video, we also note when each step of making it started and ended and how it went, never what the video is about, and delete each note about a day after the video is made. While a video is being made, its outline and the scenes made so far are kept with these notes: once the video is saved they're removed from them, and otherwise they're kept for that day, so that trying again after a failure picks up where it stopped (deleting the video, or Delete my data, removes them straight away). When it asks for an outline, we note how the request ended and how long it took, never the topic or which device asked, and delete that note after a day. Each note is added to hourly totals (such as how many videos were made and how long they took) that don't say which device or video they came from; we keep those for 13 months. A video can't be deleted while it is being made; you can delete it as soon as it's finished.

Each app identity also gets one free video, ever. To keep track, we note when your device made each video, never what about. These notes stay until you use Delete my data, which removes them with your account.

If you allowed notifications, your phone's push token is kept until you use Delete my data, which removes it with your account, or until Apple or Google says it no longer works (for example after the app is uninstalled). When a notification is sent, the notes about making that video also keep the token it went to, for that day.

Security

Everything travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Database rules let each app identity read and change only its own videos and reports, and add, list, replace or delete only its own narration audio. No app identity can read a push token, not even its own. The audio itself is played from long, random web addresses (see Who processes it).

Changes and contact

If this policy changes, we will update this page and the date above. Questions or requests: privacy@explainimals.com. Explainimals LLC, Washington, DC, USA.