Legal

AI Data Use

Version 1.0 · Effective 17 August 2026 · Last updated 17 August 2026

The third-party AI processor

WayFinder uses Google Gemini as a third-party AI service to describe scenes from your camera. The model is reached through Google Cloud Vertex AI, on a billing-enabled Google Cloud project, authenticated by the service's own cloud identity — not through the consumer Gemini app or a personal API key.

Google's handling of these requests is governed by the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service, the Service Specific Terms and the Cloud Data Processing Addendum. WayFinder is the controller of your data; Google acts as a processor under those terms.

See also the Google Privacy Policy.

What data is sent

• One camera photo per request. The app takes a single still image; it does not record or transmit continuous video.
• The text of your question, if you asked one. The text comes from your device's speech recognizer or, where supported, typed input.
• Request metadata needed for safety and quota: a request id, a session id, a capture timestamp, and a per-session sequence number. No name, no email, no device location.

What data is not sent

• Raw microphone audio. Only the resulting text is sent.
• Device location. WayFinder does not request location permission and does not send coordinates.
• Continuous video. The app takes one photo per request.

Why the data is sent

To produce a spoken description of the scene in front of you, and to answer a question you ask about it. Without the photo and the question text there is no scene to describe.

Where the data goes

1. From your device over encrypted HTTPS to the WayFinder backend.
2. From the WayFinder backend to Google Gemini to produce the description.
3. The description comes back to WayFinder and is spoken to you. The raw photo is not written durably to WayFinder's database.

When this is sent

Only after you have explicitly agreed on the in-app AI Data Use screen. The checkbox is never pre-checked. If you choose "Not now", nothing is captured or sent. A recorded refusal is honoured until you change it in Settings.

Withdrawing consent

Open Settings → Legal & Privacy → AI Data Use (or "Manage AI Consent"). Revoking consent stops future photo and question transmission to Google Gemini without deleting your account, your history, or your remaining lifetime analyses. You can re-grant consent from the same place at any time.

What happens when consent is revoked

• Every path that can capture a photo — the microphone button and automatic analysis on launch — refuses before any capture.
• The app tells you out loud that nothing was sent and where to change it.
• The app does not silently fall back to guessing or to replaying an old answer.

How long Google keeps it

WayFinder does not store the photo. How long Google retains a request sent to Vertex AI is set by WayFinder's Google Cloud agreement, not by WayFinder. As Google documents it under section 4.3, "Generative AI Safety and Abuse", of the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service:

• Requests are not routinely stored. Google runs automated safety classifiers over them, and logs a prompt only if a classifier flags it as needing investigation for a possible policy violation.
• When a request is logged that way, it is stored for up to 90 days, in the region or multi-region selected for the project, and may be read by authorised Google employees investigating the flag.
• Google states that this data is not used to train or fine-tune any AI/ML model.

This is the standard path for Google's own generative models, which is what WayFinder uses. It applies because WayFinder's use of Google Cloud is governed by the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service; customers on a negotiated Google Cloud Master Agreement are exempt from this logging by default. Google's own description is at Abuse monitoring, and it, not this page, is authoritative if the two ever disagree.

Changes to this disclosure

This disclosure is versioned. If we change what data is sent, which AI processor we use, or why it is sent, the version number above will increase and the app will ask you to agree to the new version before any further AI transmission.

See also

• Privacy Policy — the full data-handling policy.
• Terms of Service — the user agreement.
• Safety & Limitations — what WayFinder can and cannot do.

Contact

Email support@way-finder.tech.