PearlAi - Privacy Policy

Introduction

Welcome to PearlAi. We are committed to protecting your privacy and complying with applicable data protection laws. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal information when you use our application.

PearlAi is an AI-powered academic assistant for Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) students, created by Hana Kouiriti and Yasmine Ait Haddou.

By using PearlAi, you consent to the data practices described in this Privacy Policy.

Information We Collect

We collect the following types of information when you use PearlAi:

1. Information you provide directly:

• Text inputs: Questions and messages you enter in the chat interface
• Voice recordings: When you use voice input features
• Images: When you upload images for analysis or text extraction
• Session data: A unique session ID is assigned to maintain conversation context

2. Automatically collected information:

• Device information: IP address, device type, operating system, browser type
• Usage information: How you interact with our application, features used, time spent
• Log data: Error reports, performance data, and system activity

How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect for the following purposes:

• To provide academic Q&A related to Northwestern Polytechnical University
• To process voice transcription and convert it to text
• To analyze images and extract text using OCR technology
• To maintain conversation history for context awareness
• To improve and personalize your experience with our service
• To develop new features and improve existing ones
• For system maintenance, troubleshooting, and security purposes
• To enforce our terms of service and comply with legal obligations

Data Storage and Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your personal information:

• Chat conversations are stored temporarily to maintain context and provide better responses
• Voice recordings are processed for transcription and are not permanently stored
• Images are processed for text extraction and are not permanently stored
• Our system uses industry-standard encryption and security practices
• We use FAISS vector database with proper access controls for search functionality
• We implement rate limiting and API key rotation for fair usage and security

While we strive to protect your personal information, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

Data Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell your personal information. We may share your information in the following limited circumstances:

• Service providers: Third-party services that help us operate our application (such as cloud hosting providers and AI model providers)
• Legal requirements: When required by law, legal process, or government requests
• Protection of rights: To protect our rights, privacy, safety, or property

We use Groq API for language model responses and Tesseract OCR for image processing. These third-party services process your data according to their own privacy policies and our data processing agreements.

Third-Party Integration

Our application integrates with the following third-party services:

• Groq API: Used for processing natural language and generating responses
• Hugging Face: Used for embeddings generation
• Tesseract OCR: Used for optical character recognition in image processing

When you interact with these services through our application, your data may be subject to their respective privacy policies in addition to ours.

Data Retention

We retain your data for the following periods:

• Chat data: Retained for the duration of your session and up to 90 days afterward to provide context
• Voice recordings: Processed for transcription and deleted immediately after
• Images: Processed for text extraction and deleted immediately after
• Log data: Retained for up to 90 days for troubleshooting and security purposes

We implement a background cleanup process that removes old conversations and user data periodically.

Your Rights and Choices

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access and receive a copy of your personal information
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete information
• Request deletion of your personal information
• Object to or restrict processing of your information
• Data portability (receiving your data in a structured format)
• Withdraw consent at any time (where processing is based on consent)

To exercise these rights, please contact us at the information provided in the "Contact Us" section.

Children's Privacy

Our service is not directed to children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you become aware that a child has provided us with personal information without parental consent, please contact us, and we will take steps to remove the information.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated Privacy Policy on our website or through the application. Your continued use of PearlAi after such modifications will constitute your acknowledgment of the modified Privacy Policy.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at:

Email: internationalcollege@nwpu.edu.cn

Phone: +86-29-88494381

WeChat: studyatnpu