What AI sees and keeps

Most of Paperwise never uses AI and never sends your pages anywhere. When you do use an AI action, this page lists exactly what leaves your iPhone, who can read it, and how long it may be kept.

What it is

Scanning, clean-up, text recognition, search and PDF export all run on your iPhone. Nothing about your pages reaches our servers for them.

Readable content reaches our AI provider only when you choose it:

an AI action you start on a document, after the notice that AI isn’t fully private, or
with Name and sort new scans on (Pro), the naming of items you add on this iPhone after you turned it on.

Our server handles the request in memory, forwards it to our AI provider, sends the answer back to you, and keeps no copy of the content.

Two other features put readable content on our server for a moment, without AI:

Word, Excel and PowerPoint export. After its own notice, the document goes to our server to build the file: for Word and Excel, the title, the recognised text of each page and an image only of a page without text; for PowerPoint, the title and the page images. It’s readable there in memory for a few seconds, then discarded. See Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Forward by email (Pro). Mail you forward is readable to our mail handler, in memory, as it arrives, until it’s sealed for your devices a moment later. See What’s sealed and what isn’t.

What each action sends

Action	What leaves your iPhone
Ask	The document’s recognised text and title, and the recent messages of the conversation
Suggest questions	The document’s type, title and summary
Extract	The document’s recognised text, plus an image of its first page reduced to at most 1600 pixels on its longest side
Translate	The document’s recognised text and the language you chose
Read handwriting (Read with AI)	Each stored page image, up to about 3000 pixels on its long side. Our server reduces it to 2000 pixels before passing it to the provider
Name and file with AI, Name and sort new scans	The document’s recognised text, its page count and your language setting
Count objects	The photo, reduced to 2000 pixels
Keep the layout (Word or Excel)	The pages as 1600-pixel images, and their text

No user identifier and no install identifier is sent to our AI provider with any of these. Everything travels over encrypted connections (HTTPS).

Who can read it, and for how long

Our server reads the content in memory while it handles the request and doesn’t store it after the response. Our logs record that a request happened (its route, timing and outcome), never its content.
Our AI provider is OpenAI. Requests go to OpenAI’s API with storage turned off for each request. OpenAI doesn’t use API data for training.
Up to 30 days at OpenAI. We don’t have a zero-data-retention agreement yet. Under OpenAI’s standard API terms, request content may be kept for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring before it’s deleted. We’ll update our security whitepaper when that changes.
Usage counts. Our server keeps how many AI actions each paying install used per day and month (under a hashed identifier, not what they were about) for 35 days.

Privacy: While an AI request runs, it isn’t end-to-end encrypted: our processing server and our AI provider can read that document’s text or page image at that moment. That’s why Paperwise asks before AI first reads a document, and why documents that used AI carry a small AI badge.

What is never sent

Hidden. Items in Hidden never reach AI. They don’t show the AI actions, never show the notice, and no request is ever made for them.
Never send to AI. Any document you mark with ••• → Never send to AI is refused before any notice appears. You’ll see “This document is set to never be sent to AI.” if you try. Turn the mark off the same way.
Documents you declined. If you tap Cancel on an AI notice, nothing is sent, and automatic naming leaves that document alone from then on.
Older documents, automatically. Name and sort new scans only covers what you add on this iPhone after turning it on. It never sends what was already in your vault, items synced from other devices or items taken out of Hidden.
Protected documents, automatically. Name and sort new scans and Name N existing documents with AI… skip anything of a protected type (IDs, medical, bank and tax papers), so ID card scans are never named automatically. Only AI you ask for yourself on that document, after its notice, sends it.
Free accounts. Without Pro, nothing is ever sent to AI.

Right before each naming request, Paperwise checks again that the document isn’t Hidden or marked Never send to AI (and, for naming you didn’t ask for on that document, that it isn’t protected), so a change you make at the last moment still counts.

Step by step

Keep a document away from AI

Open the document.
Tap ••• in the toolbar.
Tap Never send to AI. A checkmark appears and the document’s details line shows “No AI”.

For several documents, select them, tap More and choose Never send to AI.

Check which documents used AI

Look for the small AI badge on a document’s card and at the top of the document, next to its type.

Free and Pro

The AI helper is Pro only. On Free, no AI action is available and nothing is sent. See Free and Pro.

Tips

For IDs, medical, bank and tax papers, consider Hidden or Never send to AI. Extract and Read handwriting send page images, so the provider sees everything on the page.
With Name and sort new scans on, what you add is named without a notice each time. Turn it off before importing papers you’d rather keep from AI.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint conversion without “Keep the layout” isn’t AI and never reaches our AI provider, but it does run on our server (see above).

What if…

What if I want to know whether a specific document was sent?

Look for the AI badge. It appears once you’ve allowed AI on that document (by tapping Continue on the notice) or once AI has named it. A document without the badge hasn’t been sent to AI from this iPhone.

What if I sent something by mistake?

Our server didn’t keep it. Our provider may keep the request for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring under its standard terms, and doesn’t use it for training. To stop it happening again, mark the document Never send to AI or move it to Hidden.

What if I want AI to forget a conversation?

Tap Clear on the Ask screen. That deletes the conversation from the document on your iPhone. What the provider received is covered by the 30-day rule above.