What does the AI see, and what does it never see?

Updated 5 Oct 2026 · 3 min read

ViamOne uses AI to read the documents you add, answer your questions, write wishes and suggest gift ideas. Here is what it looks at for each, what it never touches, and the switches you control.

What the AI reads

• Documents you add to the vault. ViamOne reads each one to work out what it is, who it belongs to, and the dates, numbers and names on it, and writes a short summary. See What does ViamOne pick out of a document?.
• Your questions, and the documents they're about. Ask ViamOne looks at the documents that match your question and the family's profiles, and lists the documents it used under the answer.
• Advisors look wider. An advisor looks across the whole vault, its own subject first, plus the family's profiles.
• Wishes and gift ideas use the occasion, the relationship, the note on the celebration, what you've written in the About box on a person's card, and lines in your notes that mention them.

If a document contains words that look like instructions, ViamOne treats them as part of the document and doesn't follow them.

What the AI never sees

• Files in a private folder. They're stored and previewed, but never read, sorted or searched by AI, for anyone, you included. See What is the private folder?.
• Someone else's private folder. Another member's private files never show up in your answers, and yours never show up in theirs.
• Other families' vaults. Your questions only ever reach your own vault, and nobody else's questions reach yours. Documents move between vaults only when someone shares them and the other vault accepts, or has chosen to trust the sender. See How do I share documents with another vault?.
• Documents that haven't been read yet. Ask can only answer from documents ViamOne has finished reading.

What you write in someone's About box is used for gift ideas and food suggestions. It never goes on emergency links or in email.

Your documents are never used to train AI

Your documents are never used to train AI. ViamOne only reads them to do what you asked, such as filing a document, answering a question or writing a wish. Files in a private folder are never read at all.

Switches you control

• Learn facts from documents: on the People page, owners and admins can turn this on or off. When it's on, ViamOne picks up details like an employer, school or address from documents and adds them to each person's card, where you can edit them.
• Use outside services: Ideas can use a few outside look-ups, such as weather for a trip or public safety recalls. They're all off until an owner or admin turns them on: on the web under Settings › Ideas, on the phone under More › Ideas. When on, only a city, a date, a make and model, a medicine's name or a currency is sent, never a name or a document.

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