CHAI Systems · Privacy notice
Privacy notice
The general website notice was approved by the founder on 2026-09-04; its backup-copy facts and the link to "Deleting your data" were amended and approved on 2026-10-14. The public-conversation additions dated 2026-09-20 are a publication candidate; their sentence on the website backups was amended and approved on 2026-10-15. Public live-agent admission remains disabled until founder review and the release checks complete. A formal legal review follows before the production launch.
This notice explains what CHAI Systems does with information about you. It is written to be read, not skimmed. If anything here is unclear, ask us through the form named at the end.
Who we are
CHAI Systems is a technology company operated from South Africa by its founder, Himesh Ramjee. Under South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) we are the "responsible party" for your information, and the founder is the information officer. If you are in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also applies, and we are the "controller".
What we collect, and why
Today the site collects registration and feedback information. If you explicitly start a public AI conversation, it also creates the complete conversation record described below.
| When | What | Why | Kept because |
|---|---|---|---|
| You register interest | Your name, your email address, which products you ticked, and the line you wrote about why | To tell you about early access when there is something to show, and to understand who is interested | You asked us to (consent) |
| You leave a feedback note | The note, the part of the page it points to, and the version of the page you saw | To improve the site | You chose to send it (consent) |
| You start a public AI conversation | Your exact submitted text; submitted voice recordings; transcription revisions; generated replies and reply audio; delivery, interruption and browser playback reports; the selected AI representative, model profile and consent version | To provide the conversation and let authorized operators investigate security and privacy problems, assess factual accuracy and improve the service | You explicitly agree before choosing Start (consent) |
| Any request | Your internet address (IP) and browser type, in server logs | To stop abuse and limit repeated requests | Our legitimate interest in keeping the site working |
Audio that stays in your browser's local silence buffer and is never submitted is not collected. A browser playback report says what the browser reported; it does not prove that a person heard the reply. There are no public accounts yet. If accounts are introduced, this notice will be updated before they go live and you will be asked again.
We do not use advertising trackers. We do not sell or rent your information to anyone.
Where your information is kept
Your information is stored on a single server in Ireland (Amazon Web Services, region eu-west-1). Requests to the site pass through Cloudflare, a network security service, which may handle them at locations around the world. Encrypted backups are copied to Amazon S3 storage in Ireland, where they cannot be changed or deleted for 90 days and are removed after 120. Until October 2026 they were also copied to a computer in South Africa, where each copy is removed 90 days after it was made. Emails about your registration reach us in a Microsoft Outlook mailbox.
The public conversation owner and its encrypted evidence store run on the Ireland server. Its approved self-hosted speech and language models run on CHAI Systems hardware in South Africa: NVIDIA Parakeet for transcription, Google Gemma for replies and Kokoro for speech. Conversation content crosses an encrypted connection between Ireland and South Africa. These model publishers do not receive the conversation. No paid cloud-model fallback is enabled for this public profile.
Conversation recovery snapshots are encrypted and stay on the same Ireland server for at most 14 days. They are not included in the website backups. Current deletion controls are kept separately so restoring an older snapshot cannot make a deleted conversation readable. There is no off-site disaster-recovery copy of the conversation store today.
That means your information may be transferred between South Africa, Ireland and the countries Cloudflare operates in. We only use providers that commit to protecting it, and it is encrypted in transit and, for backups, at rest.
Who can see it
The founder and specifically authorized operators may review a conversation for security, privacy or accuracy. Review access is itself recorded. The service providers named above see information only to the extent they process it for us: Amazon Web Services (hosting and email delivery), Cloudflare (network security) and Microsoft (mailbox). No one else, unless the law requires it.
How long we keep it
- Registrations and feedback notes: until you ask us to delete them, or two years after we last heard from you, whichever comes first.
- Server logs: 30 days.
- Backups: 14 days on the server; the copies in Ireland cannot be deleted for 90 days and are removed after 120.
- Public conversation records: 30 days after the engagement ends. Ending the conversation stops capture and processing but does not immediately delete its audit record.
- Public conversation recovery snapshots: at most 14 days on the Ireland server, and not included in the website backups.
Your rights
You can ask us, at any time, to:
- tell you what we hold about you;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- stop using it for a purpose you no longer agree with, including withdrawing your consent;
- give it to you in a form you can take elsewhere (EU and UK).
Ask through the form named below. We answer within 30 days, usually much sooner. Deleting your data explains how deletion works for each place we hold your information. You can also complain to the Information Regulator of South Africa (inforegulator.org.za), or, in the EU or UK, to your national data protection authority.
A public conversation also returns a delete-only receipt. In the conversation window, expand Manage your conversation recording and choose Save delete-only receipt. To delete later, open those controls again, paste the saved receipt, confirm deletion and choose Delete retained conversation. Anyone holding the receipt can delete that conversation without seeing it. Keep the receipt private. Its secret must never be sent through the Register interest form.
Children
The site is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect information about children.
Changes
If this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it, and if the change affects what we do with information you have already given us, we will tell you before it takes effect.
Contact
Use the Register interest form on chai-systems.dev: give the name and email address you registered with and say what you need (a copy of your information, a correction, a deletion, a question). We do not publish a mailbox address: an address on a page is harvested by bots within days, and the form reaches the same person. A dedicated support channel will follow with the first product.
Approved by Himesh Ramjee (founder) on 2026-09-04 for publication; amended and approved on 2026-10-14 (backup copies, deleting your data) and on 2026-10-15 (the website backups, in the conversation section). A formal review by counsel follows before the production launch. Version f35e9750.