Privacy Policy

AiKitchenUSA LLC ("we", "us"), doing business as AiKitchen, helps you turn what is already in your kitchen into recipes. This policy explains exactly what data the app collects, what happens to the photos you take, who processes that data, and how you can delete it. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use your data for advertising.

Photos you take (the important part)

When you snap your fridge, freezer, pantry, cupboard, spice rack, loose ingredients, or a grocery receipt, this is what happens:

• The photo is sent from your device over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection to our backend, and immediately forwarded to our AI vision provider (Google Gemini, accessed through the Lovable AI Gateway) to identify the food items in the image.
• Original scan photos are not retained by default. The image is held in memory for the length of that single request and discarded once the item list is returned. If you turn on the optional photo-retention setting, retained images follow the retention window you choose and the deletion controls in Privacy & data.
• Information extracted from the photo or receipt may be saved — item names, estimated quantity/unit, category, storage area, estimated expiration, and, where a label is clearly legible, product / brand / variant / package details, together with confidence values for what was recognized.
• The AI provider processes the image to generate its response. We do not permit your images to be used to train models. Requests are sent without your name or email attached — only the image and the instruction prompt.
• Photos may incidentally capture things other than food (people, documents, room interiors). Please avoid photographing anything you do not want processed; we only need the food to be visible.
• Receipts: we extract food line items only. We ignore and do not retain store names, totals, tax, or any card/payment digits printed on the receipt.

Data we store

• Account data — email address and authentication identifiers (or your Google account email if you sign in with Google). Passwords are stored only as salted hashes by our auth provider; we never see them.
• Kitchen inventory — items you add by photo or by hand, with storage location, quantity, category and expiration date.
• Recipes and plans — recipes you save and meal planner entries you create.
• Preferences — dietary tags, cooking-time and serving preferences, and any nutrition goals (calories, protein, carbs, fat, notes) you choose to enter.
• Shopping suggestions — the shopping list you build in the app.
• Usage counters — a timestamped record that a photo scan happened (not the photo), used to enforce the free scan limit.
• Notifications — in-app messages such as expiration warnings and subscription events.
• Subscription status — plan, status, renewal date, and the identifiers our payment processor gives us.

Personalization signals we derive

From your own interactions and observations, AiKitchen derives first-party personalization signals such as product and brand preferences, package-size preferences, substitution tolerance, retailer tendencies, consumption and replenishment patterns, stockout and overbuy patterns, shopping timing and conversion, and confidence scores for each. These signals are used to operate and personalize AiKitchen — recipe recommendations and SmartRestock — and nothing else.

• Commercial advertising or sponsorship activation, and sharing user-level profiles with sponsors or partners, are not enabled by this release. There are no ad SDKs and no partner data exports in the app.
• Sensitive nutrition, diet, allergy, health and macro data are excluded from any advertising or activation logic and are never used for that purpose.
• If we ever introduce a materially new commercial use, we will provide updated disclosures and ask you again where consent or an opt-out applies. Today's agreement is not a blanket permission for future uses.
• Deleting your account, or clearing learned personalization in Privacy & data, removes the learned personalization signals linked to your account.

We do not collect location data, contacts, device identifiers for advertising, health records, or browsing activity on other apps and sites. AiKitchen contains no third-party ad SDKs or trackers.

Using AiKitchen without an account

Your first snaps work as a guest. In that mode we do not create an account, and your items, recipes and learned preferences stay in your browser — guest use never creates an account-linked personalization profile. The guest snap counter is kept in your browser's local storage on your own device, not on our servers.

Payments

Premium subscriptions are processed by Stripe. Card numbers are entered directly into Stripe's secure fields and never reach our servers. We receive only your subscription status, plan, period dates, and Stripe customer/subscription IDs. Stripe's own privacy policy governs its handling of payment data.

Permissions the app requests

• Camera — only to take a photo of your food, and only after you tap a snap button. There is no background or automatic capture, no video, and no audio recording.
• Photo library / files (read-only) — only so you can pick an existing photo of your kitchen or receipt to scan. We request read access to a photo you select; we do not browse or upload your library.
• Notifications (in-app) — expiration and subscription messages are shown inside the app's notification bell. We do not require system push permission.

AiKitchen requests no other permissions. If a permission prompt appears that is not in the list above, please contact us.

Who processes your data (subprocessors)

• Lovable Cloud / Supabase — application hosting, authentication, and database storage.
• Lovable AI Gateway with Google Gemini — AI vision and recipe generation.
• Stripe — subscription billing and the self-serve billing portal.

Security and retention

Data is transmitted over TLS and stored with per-user access rules so that your rows are readable only by your authenticated account. We keep your data for as long as your account exists. Photo scan records and notifications are retained to run the free-tier limit and your notification history; you can delete your account at any time to remove everything.

Your choices and rights

• Access / export — download a machine-readable copy of your data from Privacy & data, or email us.
• Correction — edit or remove any pantry item, recipe, plan entry, or preference directly in the app.
• Optional data uses — de-identified product analytics and keeping your original photos are both off unless you turn them on, and can be withdrawn any time in Privacy & data. Withdrawing analytics also unlinks what was already collected.
• Deletion — open Terms and use "Delete my account" in the account termination section to permanently erase your account, inventory, recipes, plans, notifications, preferences and scan history. You can also email us and we will delete it within 30 days.
• Marketing — we send only transactional email (password resets, billing). There is no marketing list to opt out of.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights (for example under GDPR or the CCPA) to access, correct, port, restrict, or delete your personal data, and to object to processing. Contact us and we will honor these requests.

Children

AiKitchen is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect data from them. If you believe a child has created an account, contact us and we will delete it.

Changes

If we make a material change to how we handle your data, we will update this page and the "last updated" date, and show an in-app notice.

Contact

Questions, data requests, or privacy concerns: info@aikitchenusa.com. See also our Support page and Terms of Service.

AiKitchen — cook what you have.