Privacy

Who runs SikhAI

• Rohan Singh built SikhAI and runs it. It is free, it shows no ads, and it never sells anything it knows about you.
• To ask about this page or what the site holds about you, or to have anything removed, email replace-me@example.invalid.

Kept in your browser

• Your chats, up to 50. When there is no room, the chat whose last question is oldest goes first, but never a pinned chat, an open one, or one still getting a reply. If the browser runs out of space, fewer are kept.
• Your last 30 translations. You can remove one, or all of them, under Recent translations.
• Your Learn Punjabi progress: the lessons you finished, your best quiz scores, and when each flashcard comes back.
• Your conversation with the Punjabi tutor, until you close the tab.
• Your chat settings (perspective, response style and reply language), whether the translator's live translation is on, whether Talk reads translations aloud, your theme, whether you turned off visit counting, and whether you were signed in, so your session comes back quickly.
• On the Seva board, the country you last chose; and an event you've started writing but not posted, until you close the tab.
• One cookie, sikhai.lang, set only when you change the language. It keeps your choice for a year, so a link opens in your language.
• While you are signed in, Firebase, Google's sign-in service, keeps your session here: your account ID, name, email address, the address of your profile photo, and sign-in tokens. Signing out removes it. Firebase also notes which days its code ran in this browser, for its own usage counts.

Kept in your account

• You can sign in with Google. You do it in a window from Google, under Google's privacy policy, and Google then gives the site your name, email address and profile photo.
• The site uses only your first name, which the navbar shows, and your account ID, a random code Firebase gives your account. It never shows or uses your email address or photo.
• Firebase keeps your account (your name, email address, photo address, and when you signed up and last signed in) until it is deleted. It also logs the IP address you sign in from, for a few weeks.
• Once saved chats are switched on for accounts, your chats are kept in your account instead of the browser: up to 100, plus any you pin. Past that, the chat whose last question is oldest is deleted, with its share link. Chats you move there from this browser are removed from the browser once saved.
• Your account also keeps, privately, which Seva events you host and which you've joined, and which chats you've shared, so you can manage them. No one else can read these notes.

What others can see

• A chat you share becomes a read-only copy that anyone with the link can open, until you stop sharing it, or delete the chat or your account. The copy holds the chat's name and its answered messages, as you wrote them, and nothing else about you: not your name, email address or account ID.
• Anyone who opens the link can continue the conversation, which copies it into their own browser or account. Their copy stays after you stop sharing.
• Seva events you post are public, each on a page of its own that anyone can open or share and search engines can list: the title, description, time, place, the “Hosted by” name and any contact you add. An event doesn't hold your account ID, or your Google name unless you type it in.
• When you join a Seva event, its host sees the name you give and, only if you choose to share them, your email address or phone number. Everyone else sees only how many have joined. The host never sees your account ID.
• If you report a Seva event, the report holds your account ID, the event, the reason and anything you add. Only the site's admins can read it, never the event's host, and it's deleted once dealt with. Admins can also hide an event: it stays stored, and its host still sees it.

Sent to other services

• Google Gemini writes the answers. Each chat message goes to it with up to 10 earlier messages from the chat, any passage you attached (sent again with every message), and your chat settings. Text you translate goes to it too: when you press Translate, and, while live translation is on, as you type, each time you pause. On the Talk page, each recording you make goes to it too, to be written down and translated. The site records only while you hold the button (with a keyboard or a screen reader, from one press of it to the next), never for more than 15 seconds, and keeps no recording.
• Messages to the Punjabi tutor go to Gemini too, with up to 8 earlier messages from the conversation and the lesson you opened it from.
• Your name, account ID and IP address never go with them. What you write goes as you wrote it, and a recording carries the voice of whoever speaks in it, so leave out anything you want to keep private.
• SikhAI uses Gemini's paid service. Under Google's terms for it, Google doesn't use what the site sends to improve its products. It keeps it for up to 55 days, only to detect misuse and for disclosures the law requires.
• Google Cloud Translation stands in when Gemini is busy, for English or Gurmukhi text, and “Compare with Google Translate” sends it the translation shown. Google holds that text only while translating it.
• On the Talk page, Google Cloud Text-to-Speech reads the Punjabi translations aloud, and English ones when your device has no English voice of its own, or its voice fails or doesn't start within a few seconds (otherwise your device reads English itself). The site's server sends it the translated text, which Google holds only while reading it, and passes the audio on to your browser, which keeps it only until you leave the page.
• GurbaniNow supplies the Hukamnama, the Angs and the shabads. To check the Gurbani a reply quotes, the site's server looks up the quoted lines there. Your question is never sent. What you type into Shabad Search goes there too, from the site's server, to find the line. It is also part of the search's address, which Vercel's logs record like any page you request.
• Firebase, Google's app platform, runs sign-in and keeps accounts, saved chats, share links, and Seva events with their sign-ups and reports. Your browser connects to it directly for signing in, while you're signed in, and on a share link, so Google sees your IP address then. The Seva pages are built on this site's server, so looking at events doesn't connect your browser to Firebase. Otherwise your browser connects only to this site.
• An event's directions and calendar links open Google Maps or Google Calendar, and sharing it on WhatsApp opens WhatsApp, with the event's details. Those services then get the details, and your IP address, under their own privacy policies. The calendar file for other calendars comes from this site.
• Vercel hosts the site. Its logs record your IP address and the pages you request, for a short time. The site's own logs never contain what you write, though they can contain a page's address.
• When something on the site fails, in your browser or on its server, a short error report goes to Sentry, an error-tracking service, so the site's owner hears about it. It says what failed and where in the site's code, the page's address (without any ID, and without what you searched for), the site's version, and your browser and operating system. It never contains what you write, your account ID or your IP address: your browser sends its reports to this site, whose server checks them again before passing them on. A report can't be traced back to you, so it can't be removed on request; Sentry deletes it after 30 days.
• To keep any one visitor from using up the AI features, reading aloud or Shabad Search, or flooding the site with error reports, the site's server counts how often each IP address uses them, this minute and today. It counts under a code made from the address with a secret that changes every day, keeps the code only in its memory, and never writes it down or sends it anywhere.

Counting visits

• Vercel Web Analytics counts visits, so the site can see which pages people use. For each page view it records which page it was (never a share link's ID), the site you came from, the time, your approximate location (country, region and city), and your browser, operating system and kind of device.
• It uses no cookies and keeps nothing in your browser. To tell visitors apart, it makes a code from your request that is thrown away within 24 hours, so your visits can't be linked from one day to the next. The site sees only totals.
• Vercel Speed Insights measures how fast pages load: which page it was, your connection speed, browser, operating system, kind of device and country. It uses no cookies either.
• If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, neither counts you, and your browser sends no error reports. You can also turn all three off with the switch below; your choice is kept in this browser.

Age limits

• The features that use AI (Ask SikhAI, the translator with its Talk page, and the Punjabi tutor) are for people 18 and over, as the Terms of use say. Google's terms for Gemini require it.
• SikhAI doesn't knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you think a child has signed in or shared something here, email replace-me@example.invalid and it will be deleted.

Where it is handled

• SikhAI is run from the United States: Vercel runs the site's server code there, Firebase keeps accounts, saved chats, share links and Seva events there, and Sentry keeps error reports there. If you visit from another country, your information goes to the US.
• Google may handle what the site sends to Gemini, Cloud Translation and Cloud Text-to-Speech in other countries where it has data centers.

Removing it

• Delete a chat from the chat list; that also ends its share link, if it has one. Remove translations under Recent translations.
• Clear your Learn Punjabi progress with Reset progress on the Learn Punjabi page.
• Stop sharing a chat from its share dialog: the link stops working at once.
• Leave a Seva event, or remove your sign-up once it's over, from the event's page; cancel an event you host from its page too.
• Delete your account from the menu under the person icon at the top of every page, or, while you're signed in, with the button below. Google asks you to sign in again first. It deletes your share links, the Seva events you host (cancelled first, then deleted with their volunteers' sign-ups), your Seva sign-ups and the chats saved in your account, then the account itself. A report you sent about an event stays until the admins deal with it.
• Signing out, or deleting your account, leaves your chats, translations and settings in this browser. To remove those too (on a shared computer, say), use Clear this browser below: it signs you out and removes everything the site keeps in this browser, except a choice not to count your visits.
• If you can't sign in, or want only an event you host deleted, email replace-me@example.invalid from the address you sign in with, and it will be deleted within 30 days. You'll get a reply when it's done.
• Google can take up to 180 days more to clear deleted data from its backups.

Changes to this page

When what the site keeps or sends changes, this page changes with it, and the date at the top says when.