Privacy policy

1. Data controller

The Happiness Institute, 50 avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris, France. Contact: contact@happiness-institute.com.

2. Data processed on this website

• Waiting list: first name, last name, email, phone (optional), offer of interest, first name of the person concerned, relationship, message, consent.
• Contact form: the details and message you send us.
• Questions to Emma (written or spoken): the text of your questions and of Emma's answers, stored without your name or email, to understand what visitors are looking for and improve Emma. This conversation is a demo: your voice is transmitted live to ElevenLabs, in the United States, which keeps the recording and transcription of the conversation on our behalf for 5 days, then erases them (see section 8).
• "Book page" demos (from a recorded or written memory, or for children): what you record or write is sent to our artificial intelligence providers to write the page, and is not kept by Kizuna afterwards.
• Follow-up request after a question to Emma: email, question, channel (written or voice), page, consent, and the usage-limit technical fingerprint described below, to prevent abuse. It is passed on to the team by email and on its internal messaging tool. A draft reply may be prepared by Anthropic for the team, which reviews it before answering you.
• Usage limits of Emma and the demos: a technical fingerprint computed from your IP address and browser, without storing the IP address itself.
• Measuring our adverts: with your consent, the website loads Meta's pixel through Google Tag Manager. It sends Meta the pages viewed, clicks on the buttons leading to Emma or to the free trial and browsing events (opening Emma's window, trial button used), with your IP address and browser, to measure how well our adverts work. See the cookie policy.

3. Data processed in the app

• Account: email address, display name if you give one, language, version of the terms you accepted and the date you accepted them.
• Sign-in: you sign in with a 6-digit code sent by email. The code is kept as a fingerprint, never in plain text, and erased as soon as it has been used. Your sign-in session is kept in a secure cookie.
• Sign-up origin: the link or advert that brought you (campaign parameters, Google or Meta click identifiers), to know which campaigns work.
• Interviews: the first name of the storyteller, the written transcription of your conversations with Emma, the date and length of each session, the topics already covered. Your voice is transmitted live to ElevenLabs, in the United States, for the conversation and the transcription. By default, the recording of your voice is kept for 60 days after each session, then erased. The written transcript is kept, to write your story. With the €39 voice replay option, added to your offer in the Kizuna app and accepted by the storyteller, your recordings are kept for as long as your account exists, from the moment the option is added: the recordings still kept, those of the last 60 days, and the following ones; those already erased cannot be recovered. You have two months to decide to keep them. You find your recordings session by session, one MP3 file per session, to download at any time. You can also ask for them to be deleted at any time, and they are erased with your account. This option is separate from the voice demo on this website.
• Voice replay option: Before their first interview, the storyteller is told on screen how long their voice is kept (60 days after each session, or for as long as the account exists if the option is chosen), and gives their own consent. We record this consent and its date. A copy of their recordings is then kept on our servers in Frankfurt for as long as the account exists, from the moment the option is added: the recordings still kept, those of the last 60 days, and the following ones; those already erased cannot be recovered. You have two months to decide to keep them.
• Story: the memories found in your interviews, the summary of each session, which lets Emma pick up where you left off, and the chapters written.
• Orders: name, delivery address, phone number (requested by the carrier to deliver a book), order contents, amount and date. Your bank details are entered at Stripe: we never have access to them.
• Technical data: connection logs (IP address, browser), needed for security and abuse prevention.

4. Sensitive data and people mentioned

When telling your life story, you may mention your health, religious beliefs or other sensitive information. We process it only because you choose to share it, on the basis of your explicit consent (Article 9.2.a GDPR), and only to write your story and, if you have agreed, to improve Emma (see section 5). You can ask at any time for a passage to be removed.

Your story mentions other people. This information is used only for your story and, if you have agreed, to improve Emma, and is shared only with the relatives you choose. Anyone mentioned can exercise their rights with us.

5. Purposes and legal bases

• Providing the service (sign-in, interviews, transcription, writing and reading the story, sharing, service emails such as the sign-in code or the notice that a chapter is ready): performance of the contract.
• Responding to your requests (waiting list, contact, follow-up): your consent.
• Storing the questions asked to Emma on the website to improve Emma: legitimate interest. You can object by writing to us.
• Knowing where sign-ups come from: legitimate interest.
• Improving Emma from your interviews in the app, only if you have ticked the optional "improve Emma" box, when signing up or in your preferences: your explicit consent, which you can withdraw at any time in your preferences. No person listens to or reads your conversations to improve Emma: artificial intelligence systems analyse their written transcript, which remains confidential.
• Sensitive data you share: explicit consent.
• Keeping the voice, for 60 days or with the voice replay option: the consent of the storyteller. Before their first interview, the storyteller is told on screen how long their voice is kept (60 days after each session, or for as long as the account exists if the option is chosen), and gives their own consent. They can withdraw this consent at any time by writing to us; their recordings are then erased.
• Invoicing and accounting: legal obligation.
• Measuring our adverts (Meta pixel): your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• Security, abuse prevention (including Emma's usage limits): legitimate interest.

Your content is neither resold nor used for advertising. We do not use it to train artificial intelligence models, and our providers Anthropic and OpenAI do not use it to train theirs.

6. Recipients and processors

Your data is accessible only to the Kizuna team members who need it and to the following providers, each for its own task only:

• DigitalOcean: hosting of the app's servers, database and files, including the voice replay option's recordings, in Frankfurt (Germany).
• Vercel: hosting of the website and of the app's pages.
• ElevenLabs: voice conversation with Emma, on the website and in the app, and voice transcription. ElevenLabs, in the United States, receives your voice live and transcribes it. For your interviews in the app, the recording is copied to our servers in Frankfurt, then erased at ElevenLabs. For the website's voice demo, ElevenLabs keeps the recording and transcription on our behalf for 5 days (see section 8).
• Anthropic (Claude models): writing the story, summarising sessions, Emma's written answers and the demo pages. Anthropic receives the texts needed for each task (transcriptions, questions).
• OpenAI: illustrations for the website's "children's book" demo and, if we turn it on, writing the story.
• Stripe: online payment.
• Lulu: printing and delivery of books (name, delivery address, book contents).
• Resend: sending emails (sign-in code, chapter-ready notice, replies to your requests).
• Slack: the team's internal messaging tool, which receives follow-up requests (email and question) and technical alerts.
• Lovable: storage of the website's contact and waiting-list forms, on Supabase's infrastructure.
• Google: Google Fonts, which serves the website's typefaces and therefore receives your IP address and browser on each visit, without cookies; and Google Tag Manager, which loads Meta's pixel on the website, with your consent.
• Meta (Facebook, Instagram): pixel measuring our adverts on the website, with your consent.

Each provider uses your data only to provide this service to us, under its data processing terms.

7. Transfers outside the European Union

Vercel, ElevenLabs, Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Lulu, Resend, Slack, Supabase, Google and Meta are American companies or their subsidiaries: your data may be processed in the United States. This applies to your payment data at Stripe and to your order data at Lulu, which prints and ships books from the United States or through its partner printers. These transfers rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider participates, and otherwise on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses. DigitalOcean, also an American company, hosts our servers and database in the European Union, in Frankfurt.

8. Retention periods

• Sign-in code: 10 minutes at most, erased as soon as it has been used.
• Sign-in session: 30 days without use, then erased.
• Account, interviews and story: as long as the account exists, then erased within 30 days of your deletion request.
• Inactive account: deleted after 3 years without login, after notifying you.
• Audio recordings of your interviews in the app: kept on our servers in Frankfurt for 60 days after each session, then erased. With the voice replay option: kept on our servers in Frankfurt for as long as your account exists, from the moment the option is added: the recordings still kept, those of the last 60 days, and the following ones; those already erased cannot be recovered. You have two months to decide to keep them. They can be downloaded at any time, one MP3 file per session. You can ask for them to be deleted at any time, and they are erased with your account.
• The website's voice demo, that is, the recording and transcription of spoken conversations with Emma kept by ElevenLabs on our behalf: 5 days, then erased.
• Text of the questions asked to Emma on the website, written or spoken, and of her answers, kept without your name or email: 2 years.
• Waiting list, contact and follow-up requests: 3 years after the last exchange.
• Counters for the usage limits of Emma and the demos: 48 hours.
• What you record or write in the "book page" demos: not kept after the answer.
• Invoices: 10 years (legal obligation).
• Security logs: 12 months maximum.

9. Security

Encrypted connections, single-use sign-in code with a limited number of attempts, access restricted to what is strictly necessary, access rules limiting each story to its owner and the people they share it with.

10. Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict, object to and port your data, to withdraw your consent at any time, and to set instructions for your data after your death. To exercise these rights or delete your account, write to us at contact@happiness-institute.com. We reply within one month.

You may also lodge a complaint with the CNIL (cnil.fr, 3 place de Fontenoy, 75007 Paris, France).

11. Minors

Accounts are reserved for adults. Children's books are meant to be read by children, who do not have an account.

12. Cookies

The app only sets the cookies needed to keep you signed in. For the website, see the cookie policy.