For conversation partners

The essentials#

• You should be asked. Whoever uses Hintsight should tell you beforehand and ask for your agreement; the app offers “Quick ask” for this. If you say no, the person can discard the recording at once.
• Recording is visible. A sound and a vibration mark the start; while recording, the recording device (Apple Watch or iPhone) shows “Recording”.
• Recording and voice stay on one iPhone. Recording, transcription and speaker separation run on the iPhone of the person using Hintsight. We, the provider of the app, store neither your words nor your voice; our relay server only passes text on for the AI analysis.
• The audio goes quickly. If the app is set to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, a country of the EU or EEA, the United Kingdom, or a US state where all parties to a recording must consent, the recording is deleted at most 72 hours after the conversation, often right after transcription. What remains is the text.
• Your voice is only recognised with your consent. Without it you appear as “Speaker B” in the transcript, and only within this one conversation.
• AI only with placeholders. For the analysis, text goes to an AI provider in the USA. Names are replaced by placeholders first; audio and voice data never leave the device.
• Sharing only without quotes and without your name. The person can share individual commitments, deadlines or decisions with their team or household, or send them as a message. If you are not part of it, you appear only by your role or as “someone outside” (more on this).

What is recorded#

Hintsight records the sound that reaches the microphone: on the iPhone, on a paired Bluetooth microphone or on the Apple Watch of the person using the app. On the iPhone the recording becomes a transcript, separated by speaker. From the transcript the app keeps commitments, decisions, dates, facts and open questions so the person is reminded of them later.

Only a conversation the person takes part in is meant to be recorded. Conversations at the next table or in another room are not part of it, and neither are secret recordings.

The app does not analyse mood, emotions or health from anyone’s voice.

How you recognise a running recording:

• a short sound and a vibration at the start (the person can switch the sound off only deliberately and after a confirmation; the indicator cannot be switched off);
• on the Apple Watch a red ring or dot and “Recording”;
• on the iPhone “Hintsight is recording” on the lock screen or in the Dynamic Island when the iPhone itself records, plus the system’s orange microphone dot.

When the audio is deleted#

The audio stays for up to 72 hours so the person can listen to an unclear passage again and correct speakers.

Your voice: only with your consent#

To tell who is speaking, the app can compute a vector of numbers from a voice (voice features). We treat a vector that recognises you in later conversations as biometric data under Art. 9 GDPR.

• If the app is set to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, a country of the EU or EEA, the United Kingdom, or a US state where all parties to a recording must consent, the app stores other people’s voice features only if they have expressly consented. The person records your consent with its date in the app. Without consent the app separates speakers only within one conversation (“Speaker B”) and does not remember your voice beyond it.
• With another region the app can recognise unknown voices across conversations where local law allows it. An unnamed voice is deleted after 30 days.
• Voice features are computed, stored and compared on the iPhone only. They never leave the device, not even for the AI analysis.
• If you withdraw your consent, the app deletes your voice features and voice samples at once.

AI analysis, pseudonymised#

A language model in the cloud finds the commitments, dates and questions in a conversation. For this, text from the transcript goes to an AI provider based in the USA:

• without a key of the person’s own, through our relay server in Germany to OpenAI; we run the server from the launch of the starter allowance and subscriptions, and it stores no content;
• with the person’s own key, directly to Anthropic or OpenAI, under the person’s contract with that provider.

Before sending, the app replaces names with placeholders (such as “P_1”); a guard stops the request if a known name is still in the text. Audio recordings, voice features and the mapping of placeholders to names never leave the device. The texts are therefore pseudonymised, not anonymous: a person may still be identifiable from the content.

The AI analysis only starts after the person has expressly agreed to it in the app.

When statements go into a circle#

The person who uses Hintsight can share individual statements with other people who also use Hintsight, for example with their team, a building site or their household. The app calls such a group a “circle”. Only what the person explicitly chooses is shared: a project, a place or a topic (then also what is added to it later). If an answer of the app hangs on no topic, the person can also share exactly the statements of that answer.

• What can be shared: short sentences about decisions, commitments, deadlines, facts and open questions, with the time they were made.
• What is never shared: your voice, the recording, the transcript and word-for-word quotes. Nor are concerns, life events, relationships and preferences, or anything the person has received from a circle themselves.
• Your name: if you are not a member of the circle yourself, your name does not go out. In shared sentences you appear by your role, such as “the structural engineer”, or as “someone outside”. If there is any doubt whether a name is still in a sentence, the sentence is not shared. The replacement works automatically and can make mistakes. Your role or the content of a sentence can also make you recognisable to the others.
• Where it is stored: encrypted in Apple’s iCloud and on the iPhones of the circle’s members. We as the provider do not receive these sentences.
• As a message: the person can also send the same sentences as a message to recipients of their choice. In it you appear as “someone outside”. A message that has been sent cannot be taken back.
• If you do not want this: tell the person. They can stop sharing (“Stop sharing”), take out a sentence, delete the statement or remove you from the app. The sentences then disappear for the others at the next sync. The app cannot take back what someone read or noted before, or what was sent as a message.

Your rights#

Your data is on the iPhone of the person you are talking to, not with us. So please turn to them first. The app helps them to act on your rights:

• Saying no and objecting (Art. 21 GDPR): the person discards the running recording at once or deletes the last minutes. From then on nothing more is recorded.
• Withdrawing consent (Art. 7(3) GDPR): your voice features and voice samples are deleted at once.
• Erasure (Art. 17 GDPR): “Forget person” removes your voice data, the statements about you with their evidence and the passages in which you speak. Single conversations or periods can be deleted entirely.
• Access (Art. 15 GDPR): the person can show you what the app keeps about you.

We, the provider of the app, have no access to this data and can neither see nor delete it. Write to us anyway if the person does not respond; we will explain to you and to them how it works. Data that went through our relay server for an AI analysis is not stored there.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority (Art. 77 GDPR), for instance in the country where you live or work. The authority responsible for us is named in the privacy policy.

Who is responsible, contact#

The person using Hintsight is responsible for the recording and everything created from it on their iPhone. If they use the app purely privately, the GDPR usually does not apply to that (Art. 2(2)(c) GDPR); in Germany the confidentiality of the spoken word (Section 201 of the Criminal Code) still protects you. If they use it professionally, they are the controller under the GDPR. If they share statements in a circle, they are also responsible for that sharing.

Provider of the app and controller for the relay server:

More about the app and the relay server is in the privacy policy, sections B.5 to B.7, and about circles in section B.7a.