Plain English, as promised.
Memlane is a private record of your own life. This page says exactly what we collect, what happens to it, and what we will never do — without a single “heretofore.” If anything here is unclear, write to support@memlane.ai and a human will answer.
The short version
- Your data has one reader: you. No ads, no selling or renting data, no “anonymized insights,” and no cross-user access of any kind — other people’s Memlanes can never see into yours.
- Photos are analyzed, then the originals are deleted from our servers. We keep what the photo means, not the photo.
- AI providers get text drawn from your record, never your photo library.
- Every signal is optional, asked for in the app at the moment it’s actually needed, and can be turned off.
- Delete means delete — a 30-day change-of-heart window, then your record is removed from our servers.
What Memlane collects
Memlane composes your record from signals your iPhone already holds. Each one is opt-in, requested inside the app when a feature needs it — never as a wall of permissions on day one.
| Signal | What Memlane keeps |
|---|---|
| Photos | Facts derived from your photos — when and where they were taken, who appears (as face data you name and control), what the scene shows, text visible in them. The originals stay in your photo library; see the next section for exactly how processing works. |
| Location | The places you visit and how long you stayed, so your timeline can say “an afternoon at the park” instead of a trail of coordinates. |
| Calendar | Event titles, times, and participants, used to caption your days and answer questions like “when did we last have dinner?” |
| Health | Activity, sleep, and related metrics from HealthKit, shown back to you as charts and day shapes. Health data is never used for advertising and never sold — Apple’s rules and ours. |
| Contacts | Names you choose to link to the people in your record, so “Maya” can be Maya. Memlane never messages your contacts. |
| Journal | Anything you write in Memlane, kept verbatim, shown only to you. |
What happens to your photos
This is the part most services blur, so here it is precisely:
When you import photos, Memlane uploads them securely to our own infrastructure, where our vision pipeline reads each one — detecting faces, recognizing the scene, extracting any visible text. Then the original photo is deleted from our servers. What persists is the derived record: small face crops (so you can name and review people), face signatures, scene tags, text, and the time and place. Your photo library itself lives where it always did — on your iPhone and in your own iCloud.
We think of it this way: Memlane keeps the memory, not the picture.
What reaches AI providers
Memlane uses large language models (from OpenAI, Google, and xAI, acting as processors) to write captions, answers, and essays. What they receive is text drawn from your record — “dinner with Maya at a ramen bar, third visit this month” — never your photo library, and never anything from another user, because there is no such pathway.
Two narrow exceptions exist, both started only by your explicit tap: if you attach an image to a chat message, that image goes to the model answering you; and if you ask Memlane to create cover art or a trip poster, a collage built from the small face crops you’ve already reviewed is sent to generate the artwork. Nothing image-shaped is ever sent automatically.
If you connect your own ChatGPT or Claude subscription, those requests run under your own account with that provider, governed by your agreement with them.
What we never do
- No advertising, and no data ever sold, rented, or shared for marketing.
- No cross-user access: your record is scoped to your account at every layer of the system, by design.
- No reading your data out of curiosity — access to production data is restricted to operating and debugging the service.
- No dark-pattern retention: leaving Memlane is one screen, not a phone call.
Where your data lives
Your record is stored on Memlane’s own servers and encrypted in transit. Face recognition and photo analysis run on infrastructure we operate — not on third-party photo services. We keep operational logs (like error reports) briefly to keep the service healthy; they are not used to profile you.
Your controls
- Turn any signal off at any time in iOS Settings or in the app; Memlane keeps working with whatever you leave on.
- Correct the record: rename places, fix people, hide anything.
- Delete your account from the app’s settings. You have 30 days to change your mind; after that your record is removed from our servers.
- Ask us anything about your data at support@memlane.ai — including a copy of what Memlane holds for you.
Changes
Memlane is in beta ahead of its App Store launch. As the product grows this policy will be updated and re-dated here, and material changes will be called out in the app — never slipped in quietly.