Privacy Policy

Scope and contact

Liao AI is a product operated by Raven Amiatu, an Australian sole trader (ABN 28 271 300 438). In this policy, "Liao", "we", "us", and "our" refer to Raven Amiatu as the operator of the service.

This policy explains how we handle personal information when you use the Liao iPhone app, website, purchases, subscriptions, waitlists, or support, including information previously provided through our pre-launch waitlist. Questions, privacy requests, and complaints can be sent to raven@liaoai.app.

Information we handle

Account and profile information. When you sign in with Apple or Google, we receive an account identifier and any name or email address the provider shares. Apple may provide a private relay email address. Google sign-in is optional. Liao requests basic sign-in identity information, not access to Gmail, Drive, Contacts or Calendar, and does not receive your Google password.

Google's sign-in software also processes information under Google's policies. Google documents a sign-in identifier and an IP address that may be used to estimate general location for fraud prevention. The embedded SDK additionally declares name, email address, phone number, general location, user and device identifiers, other usage data and other data types. These are Google's declared SDK categories; they do not mean that Liao receives each field or that each is collected on every sign-in. Liao does not request a phone number or device-location permission through this integration.

Learning and voice content. We process microphone audio, messages, transcripts, translations, corrections, saved phrases, pronunciation attempts and results, conversation context, and the learning preferences or memories you choose to use.

Purchase information. We receive information needed to recognise and support purchases, such as the product, entitlement, status, price, currency, store, transaction identifier, purchase email, and country. Apple and Stripe process payment-card details; Liao does not receive your full card number.

Weekly-minute records. The service records verified subscription-start or Founding Pass activation information, purchase references, weekly allowance periods, and session start, end, reservation and usage totals. These records apply your plan's minute limits consistently across devices and restored purchases. They do not contain your conversation text or audio. A session keeps the same clock while you move between its conversation, side-chat and practice views.

One-time preview eligibility. After you use a preview conversation, we keep a private, purpose-specific keyed fingerprint of your verified Google or Apple sign-in identifier and the first-use time. This helps prevent another preview from being created by deleting and recreating the same sign-in account. The marker does not contain your name, email address, raw sign-in identifier, deleted Liao account identifier, conversation content, audio, purchase details or device identifier. It is pseudonymous, not anonymous, and is not sent to PostHog, Meta or advertising providers. Verified sign-in identities linked to the same Liao account share that preview eligibility; we do not link separate accounts merely because their email addresses match.

Private feedback. When you send feedback from Settings, we receive your report, its category, your account reference and the app build so we can investigate it. The optional Conversation check after a conversation also lets you explicitly send your ratings, selected issue categories and written notes, together with coded account and conversation references and the app build. Closing that check without pressing Send feedback keeps its answers on your iPhone; it does not submit them. Submitted feedback is stored privately in Liao's Supabase database for authorised Liao support and product-improvement review, not posted publicly. Written feedback is never sent to PostHog, advertising services or AI providers. Please do not include passwords or sensitive information in feedback.

Technical and usage information. We process ordinary information needed to operate and protect Liao, such as account or installation identifiers, request and session times, feature use, entitlement checks, service errors, app and operating-system versions, response timing, IP address, browser, device type, and referral source.

Voice, transcripts, and AI processing

Liao sends microphone audio to OpenAI's live voice service to recognise speech and provide spoken conversation. When needed, Liao also sends transcripts, recent conversation context and relevant learning preferences or memories to OpenAI to translate, explain, coach or continue the conversation. Liao disables optional session-recording and response storage in its release conversation and explanation requests. This does not eliminate provider abuse-monitoring, temporary processing or prompt-cache retention under OpenAI's data controls.

Short voice samples may be processed through Liao's service by Microsoft Azure Speech for pronunciation feedback. Some features temporarily hold audio in memory or on your device long enough to assess it or let you replay your latest attempt. This temporary audio is cleared when it is no longer needed for that feature.

Liao does not maintain a permanent library of raw microphone recordings or use your voice for biometric identification. Conversation transcripts, learning history, saved phrases, and learning memories are ordinarily stored on your device, although audio and text still pass through Liao's service providers when required to provide a feature.

OpenAI states that API content is not used to train its models by default unless the customer opts in. Liao does not opt in and does not use your content to train its own model. OpenAI may retain abuse-monitoring logs containing prompts, responses, and related metadata for up to 30 days unless a different legal or security requirement applies. Microsoft states that real-time speech-to-text and pronunciation-assessment audio is processed in memory and is not retained by Azure Speech.

Liao can save audio of its own replies on your device so you can replay them without generating another response. Replay files are kept separately for each Liao account, protected on the device and excluded from device backups. Replies older than 30 days are no longer eligible for playback. Storage is limited to 100 MiB per account and 16 MiB per clip; old files are pruned when the cache is used rather than at an exact scheduled deletion time. Removing the associated conversation or local account data also removes its replay files. This is generated Liao audio, not a permanent library of your microphone recordings.

When you request generated audio for a saved phrase, the phrase is sent to OpenAI. The resulting audio may be held in a private cache and reused for an identical phrase and voice request, including across users. Cached audio is not labelled with your profile. Avoid including sensitive personal information in phrases you ask Liao to save or generate.

Website, purchases, and analytics

Our Google Play waitlist uses Tally to collect information you choose to provide, such as your name, email address, Mandarin level, learning goals, and consent choice. We use it to send the Android availability updates you request. Previous pre-launch waitlist records remain covered by this policy and the retention rules below. Support messages contain the information you choose to send.

Website checkout is provided through RevenueCat Billing, with Stripe processing payments. RevenueCat and Stripe may collect contact, billing, country, device, and transaction information under their own privacy policies. Liao receives the information needed to recognise, activate, reconcile, support, refund, and prevent fraud involving a purchase.

Website analytics and app operational reporting are separate. Website analytics can include page or section views, referral source, browser and device information. The app's essential operational reports contain identifiers, feature/service labels, session and response timing, counts, errors, billing units and estimated costs. These reports do not include conversation text, audio, translations, topics, names, email addresses or learning memories. They use pseudonymous identifiers; this does not make them anonymous. PostHog person profiles and session recording are not enabled for these reports.

Aggregate service reports. We calculate daily totals from existing account-creation, preview-access, verified purchase, session-accounting and service-reliability records to understand and operate Liao. These reports include people who leave optional usage analytics off. We send PostHog only dates, reporting categories and overall counts or cost estimates, without account, device, purchase or conversation identifiers, names, email addresses, conversation content or feedback text. Sandbox and known internal tests are reported separately. These totals do not collect additional screen taps, guide steps or onboarding answers, and do not turn optional app analytics on.

Optional app product analytics. This is off by default. If you choose "Share usage analytics" during onboarding or in Settings, Liao sends bounded feature-use events, foreground duration, learning-activity counts, and your fixed onboarding choices to Liao's app-only PostHog project. Those choices can include your learning reason, conversation level, daily goal, focus area, reading-support settings, and reminder choice. After you explicitly send a Conversation check, its numeric ratings and fixed issue categories may also appear in PostHog, linked to coded account and conversation references, only while optional app analytics is enabled. Sending private feedback does not turn analytics on. Liao sends only whether you supplied a preferred name—not the name you typed. Events are linked to a coded account reference, not your name or email address. They do not include conversation text, microphone audio, recordings, transcripts, translations, corrections, words or phrases, topics, learning memories, written feedback messages, or session recordings. IP-based location enrichment is disabled. PostHog may add limited delivery metadata needed to receive and de-duplicate an event.

You can switch this optional sharing off at any time. Switching it off clears unsent optional events from the device and stops future optional collection for that Liao account; it does not turn off the essential operational reporting described above. Website analytics preferences are separate and do not grant permission for app analytics.

Advertising measurement. Liao uses Meta Platforms' iOS software only to measure whether advertising led to an app install, app activation or paid subscription. The Meta software can send Meta an install or app-activation event with limited app, device and network context. Liao does not send Meta your conversation text, microphone audio, recordings, transcripts, translations, corrections, saved words, learning topics, memories, feedback messages, name or email address.

When you press Subscribe, Liao may ask for Apple's App Tracking Transparency permission. If you choose Allow, Liao can provide Meta and RevenueCat with the iOS advertising identifier, a Meta-generated anonymous identifier, IP address, and limited app and device context for advertising attribution. RevenueCat then sends Meta subscription-lifecycle events such as an initial purchase or renewal, including a hashed version of your RevenueCat account identifier, the product, value, currency, event time and a transaction or event reference. Hashing the identifier does not make this information anonymous. Liao does not send these purchase events separately through the Meta software, which avoids double-counting the same subscription.

If you choose Ask App Not to Track, the purchase still works. Liao does not make the advertising identifier available to Meta or ask RevenueCat to deliver that App Store subscription event to Meta. Limited install or app-activation measurement that does not use the advertising identifier may still operate where permitted by Apple. You can change tracking permission later in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking. Liao applies the changed permission when you return to the app. RevenueCat stops subsequent subscription-event delivery to Meta after it receives the updated permission; it cannot learn a change made while your device is offline until the device reconnects and syncs. Meta and RevenueCat may retain earlier information under their policies and applicable law.

Hosting, delivery, email, and security providers may process ordinary network and message information needed to deliver and protect the service and respond to you.

How we use and share information

We use information to provide and personalise Liao; authenticate accounts; process and restore access; support users; apply service limits; maintain reliability and security; understand aggregate activity; prevent fraud or abuse; and meet legal, tax, accounting, and consumer-protection obligations.

Our principal providers include Apple and Google for sign-in; Apple for App Store distribution and purchases; Supabase for authentication and service infrastructure; Cloudflare for a content-free live-session observer that helps reconcile connection status and usage; OpenAI for conversation, transcription, text, and speech generation; Microsoft Azure Speech for pronunciation assessment; RevenueCat for purchases, entitlements and opt-in advertising measurement; Meta Platforms for opt-in advertising measurement; Stripe for website payment processing; Tally for waitlist registration and records; and PostHog for analytics. The Cloudflare observer processes session and provider identifiers, connection events and usage totals, not microphone audio or conversation transcripts.

We may also disclose information where reasonably necessary to comply with law, protect rights or safety, investigate fraud or abuse, or complete a business reorganisation subject to appropriate safeguards.

We do not sell personal information or show third-party advertisements inside Liao. If you authorise tracking through Apple's prompt, we use Meta Platforms and RevenueCat only to measure and attribute Liao advertising, including app installs, activations and subscriptions. Meta may match the permitted device and event information with information from other apps or websites under its own privacy policy. Liao does not use or share your conversation or learning content for advertising.

Retention and deletion

Local learning information remains on your device until you remove it, delete your account, or remove the app and its data. Account and profile records are generally kept while your account is active. Short-lived authorisation, security, and rate-limit records are kept only as needed for those purposes.

Waitlist information is kept until you unsubscribe, ask us to delete it, or it is no longer needed for the requested launch and availability updates. We generally delete it within 24 months after the last meaningful engagement. Support correspondence is kept only as long as reasonably needed to resolve the request and maintain necessary support records.

Routine content-free diagnostics and fully settled public-session cost details become eligible for deletion after 12 months without further session activity. A daily server job removes eligible records in bounded batches. This is not an exact-to-the-second deletion guarantee. Active, unresolved, disputed, unclassified or private testing records are held for separate review, rather than deleted while still needed to investigate or reconcile the service.

Private Settings feedback becomes eligible for deletion 12 months after its recorded closure, unless a dispute, security, accounting or legal hold applies. Reopening a report stops that closure-based deadline. Reports with an unknown historical closure date are held for review rather than assigned an invented date. Submitted Conversation checks are retained while needed for support and product-improvement review; they have no automatic closure-based deletion date. Earlier account deletion removes feedback and Conversation check responses associated with that account through the account-deletion flow.

These database cleanup rules do not set the retention of copies held independently by analytics, hosting or other providers. Those providers have their own retention and deletion controls, including for platform logs and backups. We do not promise a fixed age-based deletion date for optional app analytics. Contact us about a request to delete analytics or other information associated with you; we assess the request across the relevant systems, rather than treating deletion from one database as deletion everywhere.

Minimal purchase references, original subscription or pass-start dates, purchase-account protections and usage records are retained separately while needed to recognise a renewable or restorable purchase, enforce the agreed allowance, reconcile charges, prevent abuse or meet applicable obligations. They are not erased by the routine diagnostic cleanup: doing so could transfer a purchase or give an account fresh minutes incorrectly. Unsettled provider charges and dispute or security evidence are also retained for investigation. We review whether retained information is still necessary and delete or de-identify it when it is no longer required; this is not a blanket seven-year retention rule for all app data.

Deleting your Liao account removes the active account and associated application records covered by the deletion flow. If optional app analytics had been shared, deletion also starts a server-side request to remove the corresponding coded person and events from Liao's app-only PostHog project. Provider deletion and verification can complete asynchronously. Liao keeps a minimal content-free deletion marker while needed to catch delayed provider ingestion and verify the cleanup; it contains no analytics event content, name or email address.

The minimal one-time preview marker described above is retained separately after account deletion while Liao offers this one-time preview, so recreating the same Google or Apple sign-in does not restore it. A setup reservation or failed start alone is not treated as preview use. We review the need for these markers annually and remove the markers and their purpose-specific key when this offer is retired. You can contact us about access, objection or deletion requests relating to this marker; we assess them under the rights and obligations that apply. This marker does not cancel subscriptions, change Apple's free-trial eligibility or turn optional analytics or tracking on.

Some minimal transaction, tax, accounting, fraud-prevention, security, support, log, or backup records may remain where required or reasonably necessary. Where appropriate, retained records are de-identified or disconnected from the deleted account.

Your choices and rights

You can control microphone access in iOS Settings, remove local learning data, review or delete saved memories, switch optional app analytics on or off, and delete your Liao account in the app. Optional analytics is off unless you choose it, and your choice can be changed in Settings. You can manage an App Store subscription through Apple, review a website purchase through the link in a billing email, and unsubscribe from launch emails using the instructions in an email or by contacting support.

Deleting a Liao account does not cancel an App Store subscription or automatically refund a Founding Pass, and it may affect the ability to restore or activate paid access. Contact raven@liaoai.app before deletion if you need help with a purchase.

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, object to, or receive a copy of personal information, or to withdraw consent. Email raven@liaoai.app to make a request. We may need to verify that you control the relevant account or email address.

Privacy complaints

If you believe Liao has mishandled your personal information, email raven@liaoai.app with the subject "Privacy complaint" and describe the issue and the outcome you are seeking.

We will investigate and aim to respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, or do not receive a response within a reasonable time, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or the privacy or data-protection authority where you live.

International processing and security

Our providers may process information in Australia, the United States, the European Union, and other countries where they operate. Privacy laws in those places may differ from those where you live.

We use established providers, access controls, private storage, encryption in transit, and other reasonable technical and organisational safeguards. No internet service can guarantee absolute security.

Children and changes to this policy

Liao is not intended for children under 13, and children under 13 must not use it. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Contact us if you believe a child has provided information so we can review and delete it where required.

We may update this policy as Liao, its providers, or the law changes. We will post the revised policy here and provide additional notice where a change materially affects how personal information is handled.