Privacy Policy

01What stays on your Mac

• Reading. Ambient reads the window in front of you through macOS Accessibility: its text, what you select, and the file it has open, such as a PDF. It notes when you scroll and how long it has been since you last used the keyboard or mouse, but never what you type. It takes no screenshots and asks for no Screen Recording permission. To read some apps, it switches on their accessibility support, which can make them redraw.
• What it never reads. Password fields, and by default 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, Keychain Access and Passwords. You can add any app to the Never read list in Settings. Ambient can’t tell a private browsing window from any other, so add a browser there if you want it kept out.
• Thread, your memory. What you read: a card with the title, the app, where it was, a summary and labels, along with the page’s text and descriptions of its pictures. Each conversation turn: what you asked, typed or spoken, her reply, and up to 6,000 characters of what was on screen. Remarks she makes unprompted, and notes from your iPhone. Each item carries a small Rao Verified record of rounded measures, such as time on the page, scrolls, typing pace and seconds of voice. Thread lives in ~/.rao/aii/thread, a folder only your macOS user can open. It isn’t encrypted beyond what FileVault does for your disk. Other Rao apps on the Mac share it, each in a lane of its own. Turn off Index what I read into Thread and pages aren’t filed.
• Conversation and settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/nyc.rao.ambient. The local servers’ logs stay in ~/.rao/aii/run and are sent nowhere.
• Voice. Speech is turned into words on the Mac by Apple’s on-device recognition, which Ambient requires. The microphone stays open in the background only while Always listening is on, which it isn’t by default. Her on-device voice runs on the Mac.
• Keys. The account’s session (a refresh token, never your password) and any API key are kept in the macOS Keychain. A Mistral key of your own is also written to ~/.rao/keys/providers.json, which only your macOS user can read, and which Craft and Veil read too.

02What leaves it, on-device

On-device and without an account, nothing you read, say or keep is sent anywhere. Ambient still makes these requests:

• Updates. Shortly after launch and every few hours, it asks Rao’s update server at api.rao.nyc for the latest version. That request carries your IP address and the app’s and macOS’s versions, and nothing about you. It runs in Private mode too. Turn off Check for updates automatically to stop it.
• Models. Models are downloaded from Hugging Face: the reply model you choose (about 7 GB), the small model Thread searches with (the first time Thread starts) and, only if you ask, the vision model (about 10 GB). Hugging Face sees your IP address and which model you downloaded.
• Pictures. To describe the pictures on a page, Ambient downloads each one again from the address the page gives it, without cookies or sign-in, as your browser did. That site sees your IP address. This happens in Private mode too, whenever pictures are described on the Mac.

03With Ambient Plus, or a key of your own

Signed in with Ambient Plus, or with a Mistral key of your own, Ambient’s hosted features run on Mistral AI (France), and they are on by default once either is there. Your Mac talks to Mistral’s API directly: with Plus it uses Rao’s key, and with your own key, yours. Nothing passes through Rao, and Rao keeps none of it. What is sent to Mistral:

• Replies: your message and the recent conversation, with the text of the window around what you’re looking at, your highlight, and passages Ambient found in your Thread. Your name is never sent.
• As you read: an excerpt of each page, for its summary and labels; and each conversation turn and iPhone note, to find the people, places and things in them for Thread. This happens as you read, not only when you ask something.
• Pictures: each picture Ambient describes, with the window’s title and the start of the page’s text.
• Voice: the text of her replies, to be spoken. Never audio from your microphone. Mute sends nothing to be spoken.
• Insights she offers unprompted, and recaps of a long conversation, are written the same way.

What Thread searches with is worked out on the Mac, unless you choose Mistral for it in Settings. Mistral handles what it receives under its own terms and privacy policy for its API. Private mode, in Settings, keeps every reply, voice and reading on the Mac; so does signing out.

04The news

With Ambient Plus, the news comes from Google News’s RSS feed, searched without cookies or an account. A search carries a few words: what you asked about or, for a brief, up to four topics Ambient drew from your recent reading, your conversations and the titles of your open windows. Google sees those words and your IP address, never a page. The topics are worked out on the Mac for each brief and aren’t kept. To write the brief, Ambient sets the stories beside passages from your Thread, which go to Mistral like any hosted reply. Private mode turns the news off.

05Your account

An account is optional. If you make one, Rao keeps on its server at api.rao.nyc:

• The account: your email address, a hash of your password, and when you sign in.
• This Mac’s key: when you sign in, Ambient registers a public key from your Mac’s Secure Enclave, with the app’s name and version, so records this Mac signs can be checked later. The private key never leaves the Mac.
• Your plan: Ambient asks for it every few hours, when you open its menu, and more often just after you upgrade. With Plus, Ambient also fetches the key it uses for Mistral and keeps it in the Keychain.

Signing in uploads none of your Thread: your memory stays on your Mac.

06Ambient Plus and payments

For Ambient Plus, Rao keeps your Stripe customer id, the subscription’s status, plan and dates, Stripe’s identifiers for it, and each invoice’s number, amount, date and link. Stripe runs Checkout and Manage billing on its own pages, and keeps your card and the billing details you enter there. Rao never receives a card number; the account page shows the brand, the last four digits and the expiry, as Stripe returns them.

07Ambient Link

Your iPhone and Mac talk only over your local network, or directly to each other, encrypted end to end with keys kept in each device’s Keychain and never synced. There is no server in between, and the iPhone app calls no one else. While an iPhone is paired, or a pairing code is showing, the Mac’s name is visible on the local network. With Use iPhone microphone when nearby on, the iPhone is the Mac’s microphone over Apple’s Continuity, and the sound is turned into words on the Mac.

From the iPhone, the Mac receives your question as words (with how long you spoke and which microphone you used), the iPhone’s name, model and versions, and the notes you haven’t locked. From the Mac, the iPhone receives the conversation and where each reply came from. Speech is recognised and spoken on the iPhone. Notes filed on the Mac are treated like anything else in Thread, including the hosted work in section 03.

08This website

ambient.rao.nyc is hosted by Vercel, which logs the IP address and browser of each request, as any website’s host does. The site sets no cookies of its own and runs no analytics. The account page keeps your sign-in session in your browser’s local storage, and talks to api.rao.nyc for sign-in and your plan. The desktop demo keeps a couple of its switches in local storage too.

09What we don’t do

Ambient sends no analytics, telemetry or crash reports. We don’t advertise, track you across sites, sell personal data, or share it for advertising. Rao never receives what you read, say or keep in Thread, so it can’t use it for anything. If Royalties ever lets other people’s answers draw on your Thread, you will be asked first, source by source.

10Who processes it

• Mistral AI (France): hosted replies, voice, pictures and memory work, with Plus or your own key.
• Stripe, Inc. (USA): payments, cards, Checkout, the billing portal, invoices and receipts.
• Vercel, Inc. (USA): this website and its access logs.
• Rao’s own server at api.rao.nyc, run by Rao Studios: the account, your plan and receipts, the keys Macs register, sign-in codes by email, and Ambient’s updates.
• Hugging Face for model downloads, and Google for news searches, each as described above. Ambient Link’s beta is distributed by Apple through TestFlight.

11Where it lives, and why

What is on your Mac stays there. Rao is in the United States, as are Stripe and Vercel; Mistral is in the European Union. Using the account or the hosted features can move data out of the country you live in.

We use what we keep to run what you asked for: signing you in, keeping your plan, taking payments and sending receipts. That is performing our agreement with you. We also use it to keep the service safe and to keep the records tax law asks for (legitimate interest and legal obligation). We don’t use it for marketing; if that ever changes, you will be asked first.

12How long it is kept, and deleting it

On your Mac, until you delete it. Keep what I read for, in Settings, forgets older readings; it keeps everything by default. Forget, on a reading in the Corpus, removes that one. Forget everything clears the conversation, not Thread. To remove all of it, quit Ambient and delete ~/.rao/aii/thread and ~/Library/Application Support/nyc.rao.ambient. The Thread folder also holds what other Rao apps on that Mac filed. Deleting the app alone leaves both folders.

At Rao, the account is kept while it is open, and deleted within 30 days of your asking. Invoices are kept for seven years as tax records, with your account’s link to them removed once it is closed. Mistral, Stripe and Vercel keep what they receive under their own policies.

13Your choices and rights

On the account page you can change your password, manage or cancel Plus and sign out. To see everything we hold, correct it or have the account deleted, write to ritesh@rao.nyc from the account’s email address.

If you are in the UK or the EU you have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability, and may complain to your supervisory authority. If you are in California, we don’t sell or share personal information, and you may ask what we hold and have it deleted as above.

14Children

The account is not for anyone under 13, and we don’t knowingly keep data about anyone that age. If a child has made an account, write to us and it will be deleted.

15Security

Everything Ambient and this site send travels over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed, and every row of account data is guarded so that an account reads only its own. Card numbers never reach us. On the Mac, sessions and keys are kept in the Keychain, and Thread is protected by your macOS login and FileVault. No system is perfect: if you find a weakness, write to us and a person will answer.

16Changes, and how to reach us

The current policy lives at ambient.rao.nyc/privacy, with its date at the top. A material change will also be sent to the email on your account before it applies, and if Ambient ever starts sending something new off your Mac, this page will say so first. Rao Studios, LLC, New York, USA. ritesh@rao.nyc.