Privacy Policy
Effective date: 5 September 2026
AIDA (Artificial Intelligence–enabled document assistant) is a local desktop application. In ordinary use we (the publisher) do not collect, receive, host, or sell your documents, extracted text, OCR output, tags, collections, or summaries. All processing happens on your computer. You control your files.
If we ever add an optional cloud account or telemetry, we will update this notice before any data leaves your device.
1. Who is responsible for the data?
Your document library. You (or your organisation) decide which folders AIDA indexes. You are typically the controller of that personal data under UK GDPR / EU GDPR, because it stays on your equipment and we cannot access it.
The publisher. We supply the software. We are not given a copy of your catalogue. We are not a processor of your documents unless you separately send us files (for example, a support email you choose to send).
2. What AIDA stores on your computer
AIDA stores catalogue data in the Windows app-data folder (SQLite, typically aida.db,
plus a Tantivy search index), including:
| Data | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Paths, file names, sizes, hashes, thumbnails | Browse and search your library |
| Extracted text and OCR text | Full-text search and Extracted Text view |
| Tags, collections, titles you set | Organisation you create |
| Optional local summaries and keywords | On-device LLM output you choose to generate |
| Downloaded AI model files | Optional local summaries (Phi-4-mini / llama.cpp) |
Original document files stay where you put them. AIDA does not copy your library into a vendor cloud.
3. OCR and extracted text
When you run OCR, AIDA uses a local Tesseract engine (bundled with Windows installers) to read image-only pages. The resulting text is stored in the local catalogue. AIDA may also write a searchable PDF next to the original. OCR can misread handwriting, poor scans, and unusual layouts.
4. Local summaries
Optional summaries run on your PC with llama.cpp and Phi-4-mini. Document text is sent to that
local process, not to us. Windows installers bundle llama-server.exe. The Phi-4-mini
model file is downloaded once into app data from a public host (for example Hugging Face).
5. What can leave your computer
| Activity | What is sent | Destination |
|---|---|---|
| First-time model download | HTTP request for public Phi-4-mini weights (no documents) | Hugging Face or similar CDNs |
| Support you choose to send | Whatever you type or attach | The email or form address you use |
We do not sell this information. CDN providers’ own privacy terms apply to those downloads.
6. We do not sell your data
We do not sell personal data. We do not use your catalogue for advertising. We do not train our own models on your documents (we never receive them).
Third-party authors trained Tesseract, Phi-4-mini, and similar components on their own datasets before you downloaded the software or weights. That training is described by those projects, not by AIDA, and does not use your library.
7. Your rights and how to delete catalogue data
Under UK GDPR / EU GDPR, where they apply, people may have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, and complaint to the ICO (or another EU authority). Because we do not hold your catalogue, you exercise erasure on the device:
- Remove a folder from the library — original files remain on disk.
- Whole catalogue: delete the AIDA app-data folder (including
aida.dband the search index). - Uninstall: removing AIDA does not always delete app data; delete that folder if you want local catalogue data gone.
8. Children
AIDA is not directed at children. Do not index documents that contain children’s personal data unless you have a lawful basis.
9. Security
Data protection is as strong as your PC, disk encryption, backups, and who can access the app-data folder. Treat the catalogue as sensitive: it can contain extracted text from every document you indexed.
10. International transfers
We do not transfer your catalogue. If you download models, those connections go to wherever those public hosts are located (often outside the UK). That is ordinary HTTPS download, not a transfer of your document library.
11. Changes
We will update this policy if AIDA’s data practices change. The effective date at the top will be updated accordingly.
12. Contact
For the software: the seller named at purchase.
For UK data-protection complaints:
Information Commissioner’s Office.