AI Features Notice

Version: VERSION · Effective date: EFFECTIVE DATE Published by: LEGAL ENTITY NAME, REGISTERED ADDRESS Questions: privacy@zmacros.com

1. Where ZMacros uses AI

ZMacros sends data to an AI service for one thing only: meal photo scanning, for people aged 18 and over. An AI model names the foods in a photo you take or choose and estimates the amounts. Most of this notice is about that feature.

Two other features use machine learning that is built into your phone. They run on the phone, and the photo is not sent to us or to any AI service:

• Reading a nutrition label. When you add a custom food, including one the barcode scanner didn't find, the app can read the figures from a photo of the label using Google's ML Kit text recognition on your phone. The photo is deleted as soon as its text is read, and you check the figures before saving.
• The Animated card style. If you use a background photo, the phone's own image labeller and cut-out tool (Apple's Vision on iPhone) pick colours and shapes from it. The small cut-outs are saved on your phone with the photo.

No AI is involved in describing a meal in words (read on your phone), barcode scanning (no image is sent), or your targets and energy estimates (our own calculations).

2. Who provides it

OpenAI, through its API. We choose which of its models to use and may change it. If we change or add a provider, we will update this notice and ask for your consent again.

3. What is sent

• Sent: up to 3 photos of the meal (as JPEGs), our fixed instruction asking for foods and amounts, which meal you are logging, the hour on your phone (to help judge portions), a note only if you write one, your country as a two-letter code (never a state or region, and only after the country check passes) and up to 8 names of foods you log often, so local and familiar foods are recognised. These names come from our public food database; foods you created and past photo results are never sent.
• Not sent: your name, email, account ID, diary, body measurements, health app data or precise location, or any identifier for you or the scan.
• No metadata: camera photos are taken without EXIF data, library photos are re-saved on your phone, and our server strips anything left, so no GPS, camera details or time stamp go with the image.
• Route: the photo goes to our server function, which passes it to OpenAI. Our server does not store the photo or log it or the AI's reply.

Please don't photograph people, documents or anything else you would not want sent. The AI is asked only about food, but it receives the whole picture.

4. What happens to it afterwards

• Our servers keep no copy of the photo. The AI's answer (foods and amounts, no image) is kept for 15 minutes, readable only by your account, so a dropped connection doesn't lose a scan you have used. Then it is deleted.
• Your phone deletes a photo taken with the in-app camera after the scan, but keeps a small thumbnail with each food you log from it, so your diary can show it. Deleting the entry deletes the thumbnail. Library photos stay in your library.
• OpenAI: we ask it not to store the request. OpenAI may still keep requests for up to 30 days to check for abuse, then deletes them unless the law requires otherwise; images its child-safety systems flag may be kept longer. OpenAI does not train its models on API data unless the customer agrees, and we have not. Requests are processed in the United States.

We do not use your meal photos to train AI models, or for advertising or analytics.

5. Your choice

Scanning is optional. Before your first photo is sent, the app names OpenAI, says the photo leaves your phone, states the 30-day retention and asks your permission. If you say no, everything else still works, including barcodes, search and describing a meal.

Adults only. If your year of birth means you may be under 18, the app shows "AI photo scanning is available from age 18" instead of the scanner. Before your first scan, the app saves your year of birth to our server, which checks you are 18 or over before sending any photo, and otherwise refuses without using one of your scans.

Withdraw your consent any time in Settings → Privacy and consents; the app will ask again before any later scan.

6. How accurate it is

Each result is an estimate for you to check. The AI can misidentify foods, especially mixed dishes, sauces and regional foods. It can't see hidden oil, butter or sugar or tell how food was cooked, and portions from a photo are approximate. It cannot detect allergens, so never rely on it to decide whether a food is safe for you.

The AI returns no nutrition figures: calories and nutrients come from our food database, matched to the foods it named. Nothing reaches your diary until you review and confirm it, and you can edit every item. The review screen says: "An AI read this photo, so treat it as an estimate and check each item." We have not measured the scanner's accuracy in a study and make no percentage claim.

7. Limits and your IP address

Scanning has limits that depend on your plan, and may be unavailable in some places where the provider doesn't offer it or we legally can't; the app tells you. To apply these rules our server checks the country your app reports and the approximate country of your IP address, and uses the IP address in memory for short-term rate limiting. We do not store it, though our hosting provider's request logs may briefly record it.

8. Telling you it is AI

The app says before your first scan, and on the review screen, that an AI reads your photo, and labels each result as an AI estimate. Scanning uses a general-purpose model from OpenAI. We do not train or modify those models.

9. Your corrections

When you change or remove something the AI suggested, the app records what the AI said (food name, brand, amount, confidence, preparation and any doubts it noted), what you settled on, the kind of change and which scan it came from. This is saved to your account on our servers with your account ID. It contains no image and is not sent to OpenAI.

We use corrections only to check and improve how scanned foods are matched to our food database. We do not use them to train AI models or share them with any AI provider. There is no setting to turn this off today. Corrections are deleted when you delete your account.

Separately, if you edit a scanned entry after saving it, the app notes the change in a private record on your phone, with your other edits and picks (Privacy Policy section 2.3). It is never sent to us or anyone else, is kept up to 180 days, and continues if you withdraw scan permission, like the rest of your diary.

10. Questions

Write to privacy@zmacros.com. If a scan result is wrong, correct it in the app.