Privacy Policy

AI Tour Guide ("we", "our", or "us") is a service of AIchievable, Daniel Gerlach, Riedmattstrasse 3b, 6030 Ebikon, Switzerland. This Privacy Policy explains how we handle your information when you visit our website aitourguide.net and when you use the AI Tour Guide web app at aitourguide.net/app (together, the "Service"). The web app runs entirely in your browser. There is nothing to download or install.

1. Who is Responsible (Data Controller)

The controller responsible for data processing under this policy is:

2. Your Account

You can browse the website and start using the web app without registering. When you first use the app, an anonymous session with a random user ID is created so that your free credits and saved tours can be assigned to you. No name, email address, or other personal detail is required for this.

If you choose to register (for example, to keep your credits and purchases across devices), we additionally store your email address and a password (stored in hashed form only; we never see or store your plain-text password).

You can also buy without registering first. In that case, the email address you enter in the Stripe checkout is passed to us after the payment and attached to your anonymous account, which turns it into a regular account with that email address. The app then asks you to set a password. Emails about your account, such as password reset links, are sent by our authentication service (Supabase).

On our servers we store: your user ID, your email address (if registered), your credit balance, your purchase history, and the tours you have bought. Legal basis: performance of the contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR). The usage records of the guide are described in Section 3.

3. Data Processed When You Use the Guide

The AI guide is a real-time conversation. To make it work, the following data is processed transiently, meaning it is used to generate the response you asked for and is not stored on our servers afterwards (apart from the usage records described below):

Voice input

When you actively use voice input, your browser records audio through your microphone (only after you grant the browser permission). The recording is sent to our backend, which passes it to a speech-recognition service to convert it into text: primarily OpenAI's speech recognition, and if that fails, a Whisper model accessed through OpenRouter, which we only let run with providers that do not collect user data. The audio is processed solely for this transcription and is not stored by us. Speech recognition does not happen on your device. The audio is transmitted, encrypted, for processing.

Text questions and conversation

Your messages to the guide, together with the necessary conversation context, are sent through our backend to OpenAI to generate the guide's reply. The guide's voice is generated from the reply text by Google's text-to-speech service (Gemini API), and in some cases, for example in browsers or languages that this service does not support, by OpenAI's text-to-speech service. According to these providers' API terms, data submitted through their APIs is not used to train their models. We have switched off OpenAI's storage of these requests, so OpenAI keeps neither the guide's replies nor a conversation log for us. Under its API terms, OpenAI may still retain API data for up to 30 days to detect abuse and deletes it afterwards. Your conversation history is stored in your own browser (see Section 6), not on our servers.

Usage records (technical monitoring)

Our backend stores one record for each request to the guide. It serves exclusively as a technical warning system: it shows us whether the guide is delivered as intended, so that we notice errors immediately and can fix them. The record contains your user ID, a random technical identifier of the browser tab, the time, whether you spoke or typed, the amount of text and speech generated, the credits charged, and the first 120 characters of your most recent message. Audio recordings, photos, and the guide's replies are not stored there. Legal basis: our legitimate interest in secure operation of the Service and in detecting errors (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Photos

If you take or upload a photo (for example, "What is this building?"), it is compressed in your browser and sent through our backend to OpenAI for analysis. It is processed transiently to generate the answer and is not saved to any storage by us. A copy remains in the conversation history in your browser (Section 6).

Location

If you allow location access, your GPS position is used in your browser to show your position on the map and guide you along the route. To calculate walking routes and display map tiles, coordinates are sent to Mapbox (our map provider). We do not store your location on our servers, we keep no location history, and we cannot see where you are or where you have been. The AI guide receives at most derived, coarse information (such as your distance to the next stop) as text.

Tour generation

When you generate a custom tour, the city name and your chosen theme are sent to our backend, which uses AI models (accessed through OpenRouter) to find suitable places and plan the route. To locate sights, your browser also queries Wikidata and Wikipedia, and public images of sights are loaded from Wikimedia Commons.

4. Payments

Payments are processed by Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd. and Stripe, Inc.). The payment form is provided by Stripe: it is either embedded in the app or opens as a Stripe payment page, and it loads only when you start a purchase. Your card or payment details go directly to Stripe, and we never receive or store your payment card numbers. Stripe may set cookies that are strictly necessary for processing the payment and preventing fraud. Stripe processes your data as described in the Stripe Privacy Policy.

We store a record of your purchases (product, amount, date, the associated Stripe transaction reference, and the email address entered at checkout) to provide your credits and tours and to meet our accounting obligations. Legal basis: performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR) and legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR).

To investigate failed checkouts, we also store with each checkout a random checkout identifier and a coarse browser class (for example, "Safari on iOS" or "in-app browser").

5. Analytics

Website

Our website does not use any analytics or tracking tool. We do not measure page views or clicks on the website.

Web app (anonymous events)

Inside the app we count anonymous usage events (for example, how often a checkout is opened) without any user ID or device identifier. An event contains only the event name and coarse, non-identifying details: a general browser class, a random identifier that changes with every page load, and the page you came from and the campaign parameters, if the link you arrived through carries them. Events of a checkout also carry the random checkout identifier described in Section 4. If your browser sends a "Do Not Track" signal, no events are counted. Legal basis: legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Advertising measurement (only with your consent)

Advertising measurement only applies to visitors who open the app through a link in one of our Facebook or Instagram ads. We recognise such a visit by the campaign parameters of that link; a Facebook click identifier alone is not enough. If you consented, it also applies when you return within seven days of that ad visit. Only these visitors are asked for consent. For everyone else, including visitors from search engines or from our website, no consent banner appears and the Meta Pixel is never loaded. If you arrive through one of our ads, you can allow cookies to help improve our service and advertising. Only then do we load the Meta Pixel provided by Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd., Block J, Serpentine Avenue, Dublin 4, Ireland. It transmits browser and device information including IP address, pages visited and events such as viewing a tour, starting checkout and a confirmed tour purchase (product, amount, currency and a pseudonymous event identifier). Meta may link these data to your Meta account and use them for personalised advertising and its own services. We do not explicitly send conversation content, photos, precise GPS coordinates, contact details or payment details to the pixel.

The legal basis is your consent (Article 6(1)(a) GDPR). You can withdraw it at any time in the app privacy settings. This stops future transmissions; it does not automatically erase data already held by Meta. The app and checkout remain available without consent. We and Meta are joint controllers for collecting and transmitting event data for advertising personalisation; Meta is independently responsible for subsequent processing. Details and the allocation of responsibilities are in the Controller Addendum and Business Tools Terms. You can also exercise your rights directly with Meta.

Meta also processes data outside the EU. Its privacy policy describes the safeguards used, your rights and further settings. Under its Business Tools Terms, Meta may retain event data for up to two years.

We store your decision for 182 days in the ai_tourguide_consent cookie. After consent, Meta may set cookies including _fbp and _fbc; see the Meta cookie policy. Our own ad attribution lasts no more than seven days from the ad visit. After consent, browser storage also retains pending purchase measurement for up to seven days and event identifiers to prevent duplicate counting for up to 182 days. Withdrawal removes these marketing data from your browser. Necessary login and purchase data remain.

To document your choice, we retain a consent identifier, text revision, language, choice and timestamp for 183 days, with deletion during the next consent-record update. The link between a consenting ad visit and checkout (campaign, creative, purchase reference and internal account identifier) is stored separately from necessary purchase records for 183 days, with deletion during the next consent-record update. These internal identifiers are not sent to Meta. No Conversions API is active.

6. Data Stored in Your Browser

The app keeps your working data on your device, in your browser's local storage. This includes:

• Your tours: generated and saved tours, and your progress along the route;
• Your conversation history with the guide, per tour, including photos you sent;
• Settings: language, guide preferences, and similar options;
• Your session token: so you stay signed in.

This data stays in your browser until you clear your browser data (or log out, for the session). Necessary storage for login, tours and checkout remains available without marketing consent. Additional marketing cookies and ad attribution are used only with your consent (Section 5).

7. Hosting and Third-Party Resources

Our website and app are served from a server operated by Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany, with Cloudflare, Inc. in front as content delivery network and security layer. Our backend (accounts, credits, AI request routing) runs on Supabase, hosted in the EU (Frankfurt, Germany). Web servers and our backend may keep short-lived technical logs (including IP addresses) for security, error diagnosis, and abuse prevention; these are deleted automatically. Legal basis: legitimate interest in a secure, reliable service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Website: our tour pages contain an interactive route map. As soon as you scroll to the map (or tap it), your browser loads the map software Leaflet from the content delivery network unpkg.com and map tiles from the servers of the OpenStreetMap Foundation (tile.openstreetmap.org). These servers technically receive your IP address in the process. Everything else on our website, including images, is loaded from our own server. Links to Google Maps and to other external websites transmit data to those sites only when you click them.

Web app: when the app loads in your browser, some resources are fetched from third-party servers, which technically receive your IP address in the process: map tiles and routing from Mapbox, fonts from Google Fonts, the Supabase browser library from the esm.sh CDN, and sight images from Wikimedia Commons. The Stripe payment form loads only when you start a purchase (Section 4), and the Meta Pixel only with your consent (Section 5).

8. Service Providers (Recipients)

We use the following providers as described above; Meta is included only with consent:

Except as described above for Meta, these providers act as our processors or as independent controllers (Stripe, for payment processing) and may not use your data for their own purposes beyond what is described in their linked policies.

9. International Data Transfers

Some of our providers (Stripe, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Mapbox, Cloudflare, Google) are based in the United States. Where personal data is transferred to the US or other third countries, we rely on an adequacy decision (in particular the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its Swiss-U.S. extension, under which several of these providers are certified) and/or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses as appropriate safeguards.

10. How Long We Keep Data

• Transient AI data (voice, photos, questions): processed to generate the response, then discarded. Not stored by us, apart from the message excerpt in the usage records.
• Usage records of the guide (Section 3): kept for technical monitoring. We have not yet set a fixed deletion period; you can request deletion at any time (see Section 11).
• Account data: kept while your account is active. You can request deletion at any time (see Section 11).
• Purchase records: kept for the legally required retention period for business records (up to 10 years).
• Data in your browser: remains on your device until you clear it.
• Technical server logs: deleted automatically after a short period.

11. Your Rights

If you are a California resident: we do not sell personal information as defined by the CCPA/CPRA. The only sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising is the Meta Pixel, which runs only for visitors who arrive through one of our Facebook or Instagram ads and only with their consent (Section 5); you can stop it at any time by withdrawing your consent in the app privacy settings. You have the rights to know, delete, correct, and non-discrimination, which you can exercise via the contact above.

12. Children's Privacy

Our Service is not directed at children under 13 (or under 16 in the EU/EEA, where consent of a parent or guardian would be required). We do not knowingly collect personal data from children below these ages. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us at info@aitourguide.net and we will delete it.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time, for example when we change providers or add features. The current version is always available on this page; the "Last updated" date at the top shows when it last changed. For material changes we will provide a clear notice within the Service. This version applies to the Service at aitourguide.net and replaces the version of August 14, 2026, including its amendment of September 26, 2026.

14. Contact Us