The short version
- Only you can say yes to being pictured or to your own voice. Your office cannot say it for you.
- Being pictured and using your own voice (a Custom voice, which your office orders or which its plan includes) are separate choices. Saying no to your voice is fine.
- You choose how you appear, on your own link: your own photo shown as it is (cropped to a square around your face), a custom avatar drawn from it, or an avatar from our collection.
- You do not have to use your photo. You can choose an avatar from our collection instead: nothing is drawn from your photo, and we delete it. Photos of you from your office’s website are the exception: while you appear with an avatar from our collection, we keep them, as How long we keep each thing says.
- We use your photo or avatar and your voice only for the office, audiences and purposes you expressly agreed to. Your photo or avatar may also appear on that office’s signs if your permission covers it.
- Your yes is a blanket permission: within the limits it names, it covers the audio, video and text your office approves for its page, now and later.
- You can take your permission back at any time on your own link. You come off the page right away, your office cannot switch you back on, and only you can give it again.
- Your office can switch you off its page and back on while your permission lasts, and must take you off as soon as your work with the office ends. Taking your permission back is yours alone: the office cannot override it. Removing you from the page and deleting stored records are separate steps, as explained below.
- We never sell your photo, custom avatar, recordings or voice.
- Older permission keeps its original limits. Adding adult content or changing the content-release process requires a new permission that covers it. A permission given under earlier wording covers only what that wording says.
Who this policy covers
It covers every adult who appears on an office’s Lobbypie page: dentists, doctors, nurses, therapists, child life specialists, stylists, swim teachers, front desk staff and anyone else visitors will see. Everyone pictured must be 18 or older.
Lobbypie is made by Storypie LLC, a company based in Ohio, United States. Questions about this policy go to Talk to us.
What we collect
- From your office: your name, the name visitors see, your role and a headshot photo of you, unless you or your office choose an avatar from our collection for you instead.
- Your email address, if your office asks us to send you your link: typed by your office, or shown with your own name on your office’s website. We use it only to email you your private link, and delete it within a day after you answer.
- Your bio from your office’s website, if it has one: after your office pays for its order, our image and language model provider copies the sentences there that describe you, word for word, for your office to use in the intro video on its waiting room TV. We keep them until your office uses or dismisses them, and for no more than 60 days after we copy them.
- From you, on your private consent page: your typed name, what you agreed to, the exact words you saw, the date and time, your internet address (IP address) and the browser you used. These go into your permanent consent record. With your consent in our database we also keep a scrambled code made from your internet address, which cannot be turned back into the address.
- If you choose an avatar from our collection on your consent page: which avatar and when, with the same scrambled code of your internet address, and in your permanent consent record too.
- How your consent page is used: we count each time it opens, where it is tapped, how far it is scrolled, how long it stays open, how quickly it loads, any error it meets and the kind of device and browser, as our privacy notice explains.
- Only if you choose your own voice: a recording of you saying a short consent statement, then reading a short sample, 1 to 3 minutes in all. You record it yourself on your private page, never on an office page, and only after you give voice permission.
What we make
- Your own photo, if you choose it: a square cut from your headshot around your face, otherwise shown as it is, made only after you give your permission. We then delete the headshot it was cut from.
- A custom avatar: drawn with AI from your headshot, only after you give your permission.
- Or an avatar from our collection, if you or your office choose one: drawn with AI from written descriptions of invented people, never from a photo of anyone. It is not made for you, and other people may use the same one.
- A voice from our collection, if your office chooses one: a designed voice, made with AI from a written description. It is not made from you and does not copy you. Your office page says that a voice from our collection is not a recording of you. Only a voice made from your own recordings is labelled as yours.
- Your own voice, only with your yes: a voice made with AI from your recordings.
- Recordings of answers: read only within the audience, language and content-release permissions you gave.
- Your greeting: a short recording in the voice your office chose for you, saying hello with the name visitors see and your role, or in words your office writes with your permission, in each language of the page. It plays when visitors meet you, and your office chooses whether it also plays before each of your answers. Each answer’s recording also reads its question aloud and ends with "Thanks for listening."
- Videos of answers, on Plus, only where your permission covers them: a short animated video of an answer, made with AI, that plays its recording in your voice and shows your avatar at the end. Your office approves each video before visitors can watch it.
Some laws treat a voice made from a person’s recordings as biometric information. We treat every own voice that way, wherever you live. We do not offer own voices to an office with any location in Illinois or Texas; a designed voice reads there instead.
The only thing we use it for
We use your own photo or your avatar, custom or from our collection, and your voice, only on your office’s Lobbypie pages, at the locations your permission covers, including their permitted website embeds, for the audiences and uses stated on your personal consent. New permission covers every location of your office, the ones it has today and any it adds later; a permission given under our earlier wording covers only the locations it names. New permission describes Lobbypie’s content checks and release process. Your photo or avatar also appears on office signs only where your permission allows it. Within those limits your permission is a blanket one: it covers the audio, video and text your office approves for its page, today and later.
New permission covers educational content for adults and kids, including either audience your office adds later. Your office can change between adults, kids, or both while your permission lasts. An earlier permission keeps the exact audiences and limits you agreed to. Only you can add an audience on your private link. Declining that addition keeps your original permission as it was; signing does not extend its end date or grant a new custom voice permission.
- Never for another office.
- Never beyond the audience, language or content-release permissions you gave.
- Never in Lobbypie’s own marketing, and never on any lobbypie.com page except your office’s pages and their signs pages, where your office prints its signs.
- Never in ads for any other product.
Your own voice reads in every language your office’s page offers, including languages your office adds later, as your voice permission says. A voice permission given under our earlier wording, which did not say this, covers English only. A different voice requires an explicit choice; it is never substituted silently.
Your office’s website shows the office page from lobbypie.com, so when we take you off the page, the same removal applies there.
The page’s terms, linked at the foot of every office page, say its voices are made with AI.
Saying no
Saying yes is your choice. Your office agrees in our terms not to pressure you, and not to treat you differently if you say no.
If you would rather not use your own voice, your office can choose a voice from our collection for you, and the page never labels it as yours. If you would rather your photo not be used, you can choose an avatar from our collection instead, on your own link: nothing is drawn from your photo, and we delete it. Photos of you from your office’s website are the exception: while you appear with an avatar from our collection, we keep them, as How long we keep each thing says. If you would rather not be pictured at all, you are simply not on the page.
Who handles your photo and voice
Each of these companies handles your information only to do this work for us:
- Our cloud hosting provider: private, encrypted storage for headshots and recordings, and delivery of the finished screen. For Plus videos, it also runs a language model made by another company, which writes each video’s animation from the answer, its question and your name and role. That work can run in its regions outside the United States.
- Our database provider: our database of orders and consent records.
- Our image and language model provider: draws your custom avatar from your headshot (never if you appear with an avatar from our collection), and, when your office fills its order from its own website, reads that site’s public pages to suggest the team and to write suggested questions and answers from them.
- Our voice provider: makes your voice and reads permitted content in it.
- Storypie: makes Lobbypie. Its content delivery network sends your photo or custom avatar, the recordings made in your voice and, on Plus, the videos made with them to each screen.
Before we send anyone’s headshot or recordings, we confirm in writing how our image and language model provider and our voice provider keep and delete them, and that they do not train on them.
How long we keep each thing
- The recordings you make: deleted within 30 days after your voice is made and checked, or as soon as you take your permission back, whichever comes first. If your voice is never made, the recording is deleted 45 days after you uploaded it.
- Your headshot: kept in private storage and deleted within 30 days after your custom avatar is approved. We delete it sooner if you say no, take your permission back, your office removes you, or you have not answered within 30 days of your office sending the order. If your office chooses an avatar from our collection for you, or you choose one after your yes, we delete it straight away, with any custom avatar options drawn from it. If you choose one on your link before you answer, we keep your headshot until you answer, so you can still go back to it, and delete it when you say yes or no. If you choose your own photo, we delete your headshot as soon as the square shown on your page is made, after your yes. Other photos of you from your office’s website, kept for you to choose from on your link, are deleted when you answer, or by these same rules. Photos of you from your office’s website are the exception: while you appear with an avatar from our collection, we keep them, and until you answer you can go back to one on your link. We delete them if you say no, take your permission back, your office removes you or you have not answered within 30 days of your office sending the order, or within 30 days after your office’s order is cancelled.
- Your custom avatar or the square of your photo, your voice and the recordings and videos made with them: kept only while your permission lasts. When you take it back on your own link, we take you off the page right away. When it ends another way, we take you off within one business day. Then we delete them within 30 days, including your voice at our voice provider. An avatar from our collection comes off the page the same way; the avatar itself stays in the collection for others.
- Your permission itself: lasts at most 3 years. After that we ask you again, and nothing continues without a new yes.
- Your permanent consent record: each yes, each no and each take-back is kept for 7 years from the day it was recorded, in locked storage where nobody, including us, can change or delete it before then, even at your request. It holds the words you agreed to, your typed name, the date and time, your internet address and your browser, and no photo or recording.
- The consent record in our database: kept for three years after your permission ends, with no photo or recording in it, so we can show what you agreed to and when. Then it is deleted.
When your permission ends
Your permission ends at the first of these:
- you take it back,
- you stop working with the office,
- the office stops using Lobbypie, or
- 3 years pass since you gave it.
When you take it back on your own link, we take your photo or avatar and your voice off every Lobbypie page right away. When it ends another way, we take them off within one business day. Then we delete them as set out above. Permission also ends on a person’s death, and the same removal follows.
Taking your permission back
Open the private link you used to give permission and choose to take it back. You do not need to give a reason, and it works even when we are not taking new orders.
When you take it back, you come off every Lobbypie page right away: your photo or avatar, your name and role, and your recordings and videos.
We delete your headshot and recordings from our storage straight away and add the take-back to your permanent consent record. Your office cannot switch you back on. Only you can come back, by giving your permission again on the same link, while your place on the page is still open. We also tell your office to take down or replace any printed sign that shows you.
Lost your link? Write to us through Talk to us and we will help.
If you leave the office
Your permission ends when you stop working with the office. Your office must take you off its live page, from its Lobbypie account, as soon as your work with the office ends. You can also tell us yourself, and we take you off the page within one business day of hearing about it.
No sale, no sharing
We never sell, rent or trade your photo, custom avatar, recordings or voice, or anything made from them. We share them only with the companies above, doing this work for us, or when the law requires it.
How we protect it
Headshots and recordings are kept in private, encrypted storage and never have a public web address. Our team views them only through links that expire within minutes. Private links for orders and consent use secret codes, and we store only scrambled versions of those codes.