What happens to the photo you upload
One photo goes in, an illustrated portrait comes out, and the photo is deleted. Here is that in full, in the order it happens.
If you are a grandparent or an aunt buying this as a gift, you may have been told - reasonably - not to put a child's photo through an AI service. That advice is worth taking seriously, and the honest answer is not "trust us". It is to say exactly what happens, so you can decide, and so you can tell the child's parent exactly what you did.
You upload one photo
A single clear photo of the child's face. It goes straight to our server over an encrypted connection. It is never posted anywhere, and it is never visible to another visitor.
It is drawn once, into a portrait
The photo is sent to Google's Gemini API - on a paid tier, which under Google's own terms means it is not used to improve their products and not read by human reviewers - and comes back as an illustrated portrait of the child.
The photo is deleted
As soon as that portrait exists, the photograph has done its only job and is deleted. This is the earliest moment it is provably no longer needed.
The book is drawn from the portrait
The cover and all twelve chapters are built from the illustration, not the photograph. That is also why the child stays recognisably the same person across the whole book.
We build and train no AI models of our own, we never sell or share the photo, and deleting your account deletes everything made from it.
Common questions
- What happens to my child's photo?
- It is used once, to draw an illustrated portrait of the child, and then deleted. Every later image - the cover and all twelve chapters - is drawn from that illustration, never from the photograph again. The photo is not published anywhere, not sold, not shared, and not used to train anything.
- Does an AI company keep the photo or learn from it?
- We draw the illustration using Google's Gemini API on a paid tier. Google's API terms state that on paid tiers it does not use your prompts or uploaded files to improve its products, and does not have human reviewers read them. That distinction is the whole reason we pay for the tier, and we re-check it whenever billing changes.
- Do you train your own AI on my child?
- No. We build and train no models of our own. The photo is an input to someone else's drawing tool for about a minute, and then it is gone.
- Who can see the photo while you have it?
- Nobody browsing the site. While it exists it is held at an address that cannot be guessed or derived from your book link, and it is only ever read by our own servers to draw the portrait. It is never shown on a page.
- I am the grandparent, not the parent. Can I upload a photo?
- Only with the parent or guardian's permission - that is a condition of using the service, not a formality. If you are giving the book as a gift and would rather not upload anything yourself, ask the parent to make the book and give it to them; the story and the child are what you are paying for either way.
- What if I change my mind?
- Deleting your account deletes the photos, the portraits and the books together. You do not have to ask us, and you do not have to explain.
- Do you use the photo for anything else - marketing, examples, the website?
- No. Every example on this site, including the faces on our likeness page, is generated rather than a real child. A page arguing that we handle children's photographs carefully is the worst place to publish one.
The fuller legal version is in our Privacy Policy and Terms. If something here is not clear enough, that is worth telling us about - contact us and a person will answer.
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