AI & faces

Faces, photographs and AI

Photographs can be sent to Amazon Rekognition to detect faces and compare them with faces in the same Memory Box. The service stores face matching information and links it to names you provide. This is more than simply storing a photograph and can involve sensitive biometric information.

Automatic face grouping uses a separate private Rekognition collection for each Memory Box in the AWS Europe (London) region. Matching is confined to that collection, not searched across unrelated families’ Memory Boxes. AWS receives photograph bytes and opaque identifiers; the collection stores mathematical face representations rather than the photograph itself. Names and relationships are held in Memory Box, rather than sent as the collection’s person identifiers.

During onboarding we explain face grouping and AI storytelling separately. You can accept both agreements to enable these features, or continue with both features off. We save the wording and version you agreed to and the time of your choice. You can change either choice in Privacy & AI settings. Turning face matching off stops new automatic face matching. Turning AI story help off stops new AI story creation and other AI story requests. You can still use Memory Box to view your photos, play existing stories and manage or delete your data. A request already in progress may finish. Uninstalling the app does not delete your account or stored information.

Photographs and interview context may be sent to Anthropic to help prepare questions. Interview answers and transcripts may also be processed by Anthropic to organise the wording of a story.

Recordings can be sent to ElevenLabs for speech-to-text processing, and prepared text can be sent to ElevenLabs to generate a narrator’s voice. Both the original recording and the finished audio may be stored in your Memory Box.

To help prevent clearly explicit sexual content being shared, uploaded photographs are checked by AWS Rekognition and new story text is checked by Anthropic in the background. Older content may receive its first check when a sharing link is prepared. We reuse a saved Safe result for unchanged content; opening or sharing it does not run that check again. Changed content needs a new decision. These safety checks are separate from optional face matching and AI story creation. We keep the result and a reference to the content, and authorised administrators can review reported material. You can report a story from its menu, block its contributor and manage blocked people in Settings.

These tools can make mistakes. Review their results before sharing. Contact us about a face, voice or story involving you.

Your choices and rights

Depending on the law that applies, you may ask to access or receive a copy of your information, correct it, delete it, restrict its use, object to certain processing or receive a portable copy. Where processing relies on consent, you may withdraw that consent without affecting earlier lawful processing.

Contact info@memorybox.me to make a request, including if you appear in someone else’s photographs and have no account. We may need proportionate information to verify your identity and locate the relevant material.

You may complain to a relevant data protection authority. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. Contacting us does not remove that right.