1. Who we are
Maia is provided by Zumy Labs Limited, Dublin, Ireland (“Zumy”, “we”, “us”). Zumy Labs Limited is being incorporated in Ireland; until registration is complete, Zumy is run by its founder, who is responsible for these commitments, and the company takes them over once it is registered. We decide how and why your information is used (we are the “controller”). Contact us about privacy at hello@zumy.ai.
2. Who uses Maia
- Adults (18 and over) create their own account.
- Teens (13 to 17) can create their own account, with their parent's or guardian's permission.
- Children (3 to 12) cannot create an account or sign in. A parent creates a child profile from the parent's own account, and the child learns on the parent's device through it. See Children.
3. What we collect
- Account: your name, email address, password (stored only as a hash), birth year (to choose the right lessons and protections for your age) and whether you are learning yourself or as a parent.
- Learning: the language and level you learn, lessons and exercises completed, answers, mistakes, words you find hard, scores, streaks, points and badges, so lessons adapt to you.
- Conversations with your tutor: the text of what you say or write to the tutor and its replies, with corrections and translations.
- Voice: see Voice.
- Homework: text and files you hand in for feedback.
- Purchases: your plan and a record of each purchase from the App Store or Stripe. We never see your full card number.
- Technical data: device type, app version and language. Our server logs identify you only by a scrambled code, never by name or email.
Maia does not collect your precise location, contacts or photos, and has no advertising or analytics trackers.
4. How we use it
- To teach: run lessons and conversations, check your answers and pronunciation, and choose what to practise next.
- To keep a parent informed and in control of a child's learning.
- To keep accounts safe, prevent abuse and fix problems.
- To process purchases and free trials.
- To send account emails: verification, password resets, consent records, receipts and, if a parent turns it on, a weekly progress email.
- To meet legal obligations, such as keeping tax records.
5. Voice
When you speak in a lesson, your audio is sent to our servers and then to a speech provider to turn it into text (ElevenLabs, or OpenAI as a back-up) and to score your pronunciation (Microsoft Azure AI Speech). If our servers cannot do it, your device's own speech recognition may be used instead (Apple's on iPhone and iPad; your browser's or Android's speech service otherwise). The tutor's voice is made with ElevenLabs or OpenAI.
- Adults and teens: pronunciation recordings are saved to your account so you can listen back and compare.
- Children: a child's recordings are saved only if the parent turns on Keep voice recordings (off by default). Audio from a child's conversations with the tutor is never saved.
- When a parent turns Keep voice recordings off, the child's saved recordings are deleted within 30 days.
6. AI processing
Maia's tutor is an AI. To reply, it receives the lesson, your level and language, the last few turns of the conversation and what you just said; for a child, also the child's first name and age. The AI model providers are OpenAI and Anthropic. If you use the optional video tutor, the conversation also goes through LiveAvatar, LiveKit and ElevenLabs.
A safety filter checks what is said to and by the tutor, and hides personal details (such as phone numbers or addresses) before a conversation is saved. Safety events are recorded by type only, without the message.
These providers process the data only to return a result to us, under terms that do not allow them to train their models on it. We do not use your content, and never a child's content, to train AI models.
7. Children
This section is our notice to parents about children's information, under the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the EU and UK GDPR rules for children, and the Apple and Google families policies.
- Parent first. Only a parent or guardian (18 or over) can create a child profile, from their own account. Before the profile is created, the app shows the parent a notice about the child's information and the parent confirms their consent, and we email the parent a record of that consent. A child cannot sign up or sign in.
- What we collect from a child: the first name or nickname the parent enters, age, the language being learned, the chosen tutor character, learning progress and results, the text of what the child says to the tutor, daily learning time, and voice recordings only if the parent turns them on. We never ask a child for a surname, school, address, location or photo, and the tutor is instructed not to ask.
- How it is used: only to teach the child and show the parent their progress. The child's first name and age are sent to the AI tutor so it can speak to them suitably.
- No ads, no tracking or analytics, no public profile, no chat with other users, and no purchases: children cannot buy anything.
- Parent controls: a daily time limit (20 minutes unless changed), which topics are allowed, whether the child can chat freely with the tutor, whether recordings are kept, and the weekly email. A simple parent check stops the child changing their tutor character.
- See, download or delete: a parent can see the child's progress in the app, download all of the family's data from Settings, remove a child profile, or delete the whole account. A removed child profile is hidden straight away; the parent can restore it for 30 days, and after that the child's information is deleted. A parent can also withdraw consent at any time by writing to us.
If you believe we have a child's information without a parent's consent, write to hello@zumy.ai and we will erase it.
8. Who we share it with
We share information only with the service providers below, who process it on our instructions and under contracts that require them to protect it, and only as much as each needs.
| Provider | What for | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services (Ireland) | Hosting, database, file storage, email (SES) | All data stored by Maia; account emails |
| OpenAI, Anthropic | AI tutor | Lesson context, recent conversation, and a child's first name and age |
| ElevenLabs, OpenAI | Speech to text and the tutor's voice | Lesson audio; text to be spoken |
| Microsoft (Azure AI Speech) | Pronunciation scoring | Lesson audio and the expected words |
| LiveAvatar, LiveKit | Video tutor, only if you use it | The live conversation |
| Apple, Stripe | Payments | Purchase and subscription records |
| Sentry | Error reports, if enabled | Technical details of an error, without names or emails |
We may also share information if the law requires it, to protect someone's safety, or with a new owner if Zumy is reorganised or acquired, who must keep the promises in this policy.
9. Legal bases (EU, UK and similar laws)
Where the law asks us to name a reason for each use of your information, these are ours:
- Contract: running Maia, lessons, progress and your plan
- Consent: a child's profile and data (given by the parent), saved recordings for children, and optional emails; you can withdraw it at any time
- Legitimate interests: security, safety filtering, abuse prevention and fixing problems
- Legal obligation: tax and accounting records
10. How long we keep it
- Your learning data is kept while your account is open, so your progress is not lost.
- Sign-in sessions last 14 days. Password-reset links expire after 1 hour, and verification and consent links after 72 hours.
- Deleting your account (Settings → Account, or our delete account page) immediately signs you out everywhere, closes the account and its child profiles, and replaces your name and email so the account no longer identifies you. Within 30 days, your voice recordings and homework files are deleted, and everything you wrote or said in lessons is erased. Learning statistics that no longer identify anyone (for example, how many learners finished a lesson) are kept so our lessons stay correct.
- Purchase records are kept as long as tax law requires (usually up to 7 years). Backups are overwritten within 30 days.
11. Security
Information is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS) and at rest. Passwords are stored only as salted hashes. Access inside Zumy is limited to the people who need it to run Maia. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.
12. Where your information is stored
Maia's servers run on Amazon Web Services in Ireland (EU). Some providers listed above process data in the United States or other countries. When information leaves the EU or UK, we rely on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, the UK addendum, or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified.
13. Cookies and local storage
On the web, Maia uses a sign-in cookie (14 days) and a security cookie that protects forms. Your browser's local storage keeps your interface language, child mode, sound setting and drafts of written answers on your device. There are no advertising or analytics cookies.
14. Your rights and choices
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
- show you the information we hold about you, or give you a copy in a portable format;
- correct it, or delete it;
- stop or limit a particular use, or object to it;
- withdraw a consent you gave, at any time.
You can download your data yourself in Maia's Settings; recordings and files are listed there, and we send copies on request.
Write to hello@zumy.ai from the email address on your account, or delete your account. We answer within 30 days and never charge for it. If you are in the EU, UK or another place with a data protection authority, you can also complain to that authority. California residents have the same rights under the CCPA/CPRA; we do not sell or “share” personal information as those laws define it.
15. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we tell you in Maia or by email before it takes effect.
16. Contact
hello@zumy.ai. Please say that your question is about Maia.