AI and your photos
A plain-language guide for parents
You're trusting us with photos of your children and the people you love. Here's exactly what happens to them.
What happens when you upload a photo
- You confirm you have permission. For every photo, you tick a box to say you're the person's parent or guardian, or that you have their permission. We keep a record of that.
- We strip hidden data. Location (GPS) and camera details are removed the moment the photo arrives.
- A quick safety check. Before anything is drawn, an AI model looks at the photo to make sure it's a real, clear photo of a family member or pet. It turns away photos with nudity, famous people or cartoon characters. If it turns away a photo by mistake, write to us and a person will take a look.
- We note lasting features. The check writes down a few lasting things about the person, such as hair colour, skin tone, glasses, a patka or freckles, so the painting stays true to them. It ignores passing things like a crumb on a cheek or a hat.
- An AI image model paints the character. The photo and those notes go to the image model, which paints a storybook character sheet. Then every page of the book is drawn from that character sheet, not from the photo.
What the AI does
- Paints your family as storybook characters, and paints each page.
- Suggests storylines and helps write and polish the text, based on the names, ages and interests you give.
- Checks its own drawings for obvious mistakes (an extra hand, a child left alone at the wheel of a car) and tries again. A second model, from a different company, double-checks.
- Puts an "Illustrated with the help of AI" line on the colophon page of every book.
What the AI doesn't do
- It doesn't learn from your family. Your photos, characters and books are not used to train AI models, by us or by the companies whose models we use. Their terms with us say so, and we've chosen the settings that keep it that way.
- It doesn't recognise or identify anyone. We don't build face-recognition data, and we never try to work out who someone is.
- It doesn't decide what your book says. You do. Every line is editable, and you can redraw characters and repaint pages before you buy.
- It doesn't make a photograph. The pictures are painted interpretations. Likeness can vary: a face may look a little different from page to page, or from the photo. That's why you see every page first.
Who handles your photos
| Who | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Lamp & Kin (on Amazon Web Services) | Storing your photos, characters and books | Canada |
| Google's Gemini image models (through OpenRouter) | The safety check and painting characters and pages | United States |
| Anthropic's Claude (through OpenRouter) | Double-checking paintings: likeness against the photo, and unsafe or impossible poses | United States |
| Anthropic's Claude (through Amazon Bedrock) | Story text only; this part never sees your photos | United States |
| Lulu (our printer) | Printing your hardcover. Lulu gets the finished book files, not the original photos | United States and print partners |
Some of these companies keep a copy of requests for a short time (for example, up to 30 days) only to detect abuse of their systems, as their terms allow. They don't use these copies to train their models. Details, with links to each company's terms, are in our Privacy Policy.
How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Original photos | Deleted automatically 7 days after your book is finished or ordered, or 30 days after you last worked on an unfinished draft. Or straight away, with Delete my photos. |
| Drawn characters and books | Kept in your account so you can make more books and re-download them, until you delete them. |
| Everything | Delete my account and everything removes it all, except the order and tax records the law makes us keep. Those don't include photos or pictures. |
We'll email you before original photos are deleted from an unfinished draft, so you're never caught by surprise.
How we prevent misuse
Lamp & Kin is for families making books about their own people. To keep it that way:
- Adults only. Accounts are for people 18 and over. Children never use the service.
- Permission for every photo. Our terms require permission from every adult in a photo, and from a parent or guardian for every child.
- Automatic photo checks turn away nudity (including bath, beach and nappy photos), public figures, cartoon characters and photos that aren't real.
- No public galleries. Books are private to your account. There's nothing to browse, search or share inside Lamp & Kin.
- Painted, not photographic. Our books use a clearly illustrated style, which makes them poor material for fake "photos".
- Limits on drawings and redraws per draft make bulk misuse hard.
- We act on reports. If you think someone has used your image or your child's image without permission, email hello@lampandkin.com with "Report" in the subject. We'll investigate, stop printing where needed, remove the content and close accounts that misuse the service.
Your choices, any time
- Delete my photos: removes every original photo now.
- Delete a character or book: removes it and everything made from it.
- Delete my account and everything: removes it all.
- Ask us anything: privacy@lampandkin.com. We reply within 30 days, usually much sooner.
Sumeet Singh Mankoo, Lamp & Kin's owner and privacy officer, reads every privacy email.