TaleBuilder, operated by Menlo Labs, makes personalized children's picture books. This policy explains what we collect when you use talebuilder.com or connect TaleBuilder to an AI assistant, why, who processes it for us, and how to have it deleted. Questions: support@talebuilder.com.
TaleBuilder is for adults
Accounts are for parents and other adults 18 and over. Children do not sign up or sign in. A parent can add a child profile to their household so books can be made for that child; the profile holds the name the parent gives it and, optionally, a birthday, which we use only to pitch stories at the right age. Parents can change or delete a child profile at any time from their profile settings. If we learn that someone under 13 created an account, we delete it.
What we collect
- Account details: your email address and name. If you sign in with Google, the name and profile picture Google shares. If you use a password, we store only a one-way hash of it.
- Household and child profiles: names of the adults and children you add, a child's optional birthday, and email addresses of adults you invite.
- What you put into a book: story ideas, titles, character names and descriptions, the setting, challenge and lesson, your pen name, and the art style you choose.
- Photos you upload to base a character on: sent to our AI provider to draw the character, and not stored by TaleBuilder. We keep only the drawn character.
- Books we make for you: the story text and the pictures, stored so you can read, edit and share them.
- Purchases: the acorn pack, the amount and the payment reference from Stripe. Card details go to Stripe and never reach us.
- Emails we send you and your email preferences.
- AI assistant connections: which assistant you connected (for example Claude or ChatGPT) and records of the access you granted. When an assistant registers with us we note the IP address it came from, to limit abuse.
- Usage information: pages visited and buttons pressed, collected by Vercel Analytics and Google Analytics, and cookies described below.
How we use it
- To write and illustrate your books, and to show them to you and anyone you share them with.
- To run your account, sign you in, and keep your household's books together.
- To process acorn purchases and return acorns automatically when a book or picture fails.
- To send the emails you ask for (sign-in links, "your book is ready") and, unless you unsubscribe, occasional updates about your books.
- To find and fix problems and improve the quality of our stories and pictures.
We do not sell your personal information and we do not use it for advertising.
Who processes it for us
- Google: Gemini writes the stories and draws the pictures from what you enter and any photo you upload; Google sign-in, if you use it; Google Analytics.
- Fireworks AI: reviews story text for consistency before pictures are drawn.
- Stripe: payments.
- Resend: sends our emails.
- Vercel: hosts the site, stores book pictures, and provides analytics.
- Neon: our database.
- Braintrust: records the text we send to and receive from our AI providers so we can fix quality problems. It does not receive photos.
If you connect TaleBuilder to an AI assistant, that assistant's provider receives the results of what you ask it to do (for example a book's text and picture links) under their own privacy policy.
What is public
Books are private until you publish them. A published book's title, pictures, text and pen name can be seen by anyone and may appear in our catalog. Your public profile page shows your name, your profile picture and your published books. You can unpublish a book at any time.
Cookies and similar storage
- A sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days.
- A cookie that holds a visitor's draft before they sign up (30 days), and one that remembers which books a visitor has loved (1 year).
- Your choice of which household member you are making books for (30 days).
- Cookies set by Google Analytics and Vercel Analytics to count visits.
How long we keep it, and deleting it
We keep your account and books while your account is open. You can delete books and child profiles yourself. To delete your account and everything in it, or to get a copy of your information, email support@talebuilder.com from the address on your account; we will do it within 30 days. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link.
Security
Connections to TaleBuilder are encrypted, passwords and the tokens we give AI assistants are stored only as one-way hashes, and book pictures are stored at unguessable addresses. No system is perfectly secure; if we learn of a breach affecting you, we will tell you.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date above, and for significant changes we will email account holders before they take effect.