Linger Art
Privacy policy
In brief
- There's no account. We never ask your name, email or phone number, and there are no ads, no tracking, and no analytics or crash-reporting tools of our own in the app. We don't sell or share your information.
- The camera reads wall labels on your device. Its picture of a label is never stored or sent: only the words it reads are.
- Your collection and your photos stay on your device, with a copy in your own private iCloud that we can't read.
- Your location, if you allow it, is approximate and is used on your device to show museums near you. We never receive it.
- Once you allow it, your searches and questions, the words of the labels you scan, and the photos you take of a piece for the guide go to our server and to OpenAI, whose AI writes what you hear. Nothing with your name or an account is attached.
- Our server keeps the tours it writes, by artwork, so the next visitor hears them too. It never keeps your photos or your questions.
- You can take back your OK at any time: Settings, Share with OpenAI.
1. Who we are
Linger Art ("Linger Art Museum Audio Guide" on the App Store) is made by Inquiry Health LLC ("we", "us"), a company in the United States. We're responsible for the information described here. You can reach us at support@inquiryhealth.com.
This policy covers the Linger Art apps for iPhone and Apple Vision Pro and the server that writes their guide. It doesn't cover Apple, OpenAI, or the websites the app links to, which have their own policies.
2. What stays on your device
Most of what the app does happens on your iPhone or Apple Vision Pro, and stays there.
- The camera. When you scan a label, the camera's frames are read on your device by Apple's text recognition. They are never stored or sent anywhere. Only the words read from the label leave your device, as described in section 3. When you hang a painting on your wall in AR, the camera view stays on your device too.
- Your photos of artworks. A photo you take of a piece is saved in your collection on your device (and in your iCloud, below). It's sent to us only to help the guide see the work, as described in section 3, and we don't keep it.
- Your collection. The pieces you've saved or heard, the museums and dates of your visits, the tracks you've heard, your favorites, the labels as they were read, and your photos are kept on your device. If you're signed in to iCloud, a copy is kept in your own private iCloud database so it can follow you to a new device and between your iPhone and Apple Vision Pro. That database belongs to your Apple Account: we can't see it.
- Your location. If you allow it, the app asks only for your approximate location, and only to show museums near you on the "Where are you?" screen. Distances to museums are worked out on your device. We never receive your location. (When you look for a museum on the map, Apple Maps answers the search; see section 7.)
- The voice. The guide's voice is a computer voice that runs entirely on your device. The sound of the guide is never sent anywhere.
- Tours you've heard are kept on your device so you can listen again, even without a signal.
- Posters of your visits are saved to your photo library only when you ask. The app can only add to your library; it can't read it.
3. What leaves your device, and when
Besides Apple's own services (section 7), the app talks to one server of ours, and through it to OpenAI. It never talks to an advertiser, a data broker, or an analytics company.
Before you've allowed the guide
Some requests carry nothing of yours and go to our server from the start: the Gallery, Today's piece (with your device's date, so the piece changes at your midnight), the list of museums, and the pictures of the artworks.
If you scan a label without a pass, the label's title, artist, date and number, with the museum you named, go to our server so it can look the work up in museum catalogs and public records. That lookup never reaches OpenAI.
After you allow it
The guide is written by OpenAI's AI. The first time you do something that needs it, such as asking a question, searching, or reading a label with a pass, the app asks first ("Send your question to OpenAI?", "Read this label with OpenAI?"…), names OpenAI, and says what goes. Nothing below is sent until you tap Allow. If you tap Not now, nothing is sent, and the app asks again the next time you ask the guide for something.
Once you've allowed it, these go to our server and on to OpenAI, only when you use the feature that needs them:
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The words you search for | When you search | To find the work you mean |
| The words read from a wall label (title, artist, date, the museum's number, and the rest of the label's text), and any correction you make to them | When you scan a label with a pass, or a piece's tour is written | To identify the work and write its tour from what the museum says |
| The museum you chose for your visit | With a label, a tour, or a question | So the guide knows which work and which museum you mean |
| Your questions, typed, or spoken and turned into text on your device or by Apple (section 7) | When you ask | To answer you |
| The last few questions and answers, and the tracks of the piece you've already heard | With each question | So a follow-up makes sense and the guide doesn't repeat itself |
| For a question about the museum: the pieces you've saved or heard on this visit (their titles, artists and dates) | With that question | So the guide can answer about your visit |
| A photo you take of an artwork for the guide | While that piece's tour is written | So the guide can see a work it has no picture of |
None of these carry your name, an email, an account, an advertising identifier, or any ID for your device. Our server sees the network (IP) address every internet request comes from, as any server does; it doesn't pass that address to OpenAI. It isn't written down: see section 5.
4. OpenAI
OpenAI, L.L.C. writes the guide for us, as our service provider, through its API. It receives what's listed in section 3 after you allow it, and the facts our server has gathered about the work (section 6). To answer, its AI may search the web for the artwork or for your question.
- OpenAI's policy is that data sent through its API is not used to train or improve its models.
- OpenAI keeps API data for up to 30 days to monitor for abuse, and then deletes it, unless the law requires it to keep it longer.
OpenAI explains this in its API data controls, its business data privacy commitments, and its privacy policy.
5. What our server keeps
Our server is hosted by DigitalOcean in the United States. It has no accounts, and nothing it keeps is tied to you or your device. What it keeps is about the artworks:
- Tours. Each tour the guide writes is kept, by the artwork, so the next person who hears that piece gets it at once. A work the guide knows only by its label is kept by the label's words and the museum you named. Tours are shared with everyone who hears the same piece.
- Wall labels. The text of a label, as your camera read it, is kept with the work it names, so later tours and answers about that work can draw on what the museum says.
- A few lines on your photo. When you send a photo of a work, the guide writes a short description of what the artwork looks like in it (only the artwork: it's told to leave out the frame, the wall and any people around it), and that description is kept with the work. The photo itself is never saved: it's held in the server's memory only while its tour is written (ten minutes at most), then let go.
Our server does not keep your questions or the guide's answers to them, your searches, or your photos.
Logs. Our server keeps no access log: it doesn't record the IP addresses requests come from or what they asked for. When something goes wrong, its error log can note the words involved (a title it couldn't find, for example), never with an IP address or anything else that could identify you. We use that log only to fix problems, and it's overwritten as new entries arrive.
6. Where the guide's facts come from
To ground what the guide says, our server looks the artwork up in public sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and museums' open-access collections (such as those of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum and the Denver Art Museum). These requests come from our server, not your device, and carry only what's needed to find the work, such as its title, artist and museum number. The pictures of artworks in the app come through our server too, so your device never contacts these sites unless you open a link to one.
7. Apple's part
Some parts of the app are Apple's own services, covered by Apple's privacy policy:
- Purchases. Passes are sold by Apple through the App Store. Apple handles payment, renewals, cancellations and refunds. We never see your payment details, your name, or your Apple Account. The app checks which pass is active on your device and sends nothing about your purchases to us.
- Maps. The map on the "Where are you?" screen and searching it for a museum use Apple Maps. Apple receives what you type, and the area around your approximate location if you've allowed location, to show results nearby. To open the map on your country, the app sends Apple only your country's name, from your region setting.
- Speech recognition. When you ask a question out loud, Apple's speech recognition turns it into text. It runs on your iPhone wherever it can; otherwise your iPhone sends the recording to Apple to be transcribed. Only the text comes to us. The app listens only while the microphone is lit.
- iCloud. Your collection's copy is stored by Apple in your private iCloud database, under your Apple Account.
- Crash reports. If you've chosen in your device's settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may send us anonymous crash reports and usage statistics. We use them only to fix problems.
8. On Apple Vision Pro
- Your surroundings and your body stay on the headset. To hang a painting on your wall, the app uses room sensing to find your walls, and in the Gallery it follows where your head is so the room stays in place. This happens on the headset. It's never stored or sent, and the app never receives your camera's view.
- Ask listens only from your pinch to the end of your question, and your words are turned into text on the headset.
- Your searches and questions, with the painting and room you're in, the tracks you've heard and the last few exchanges, go to our server and to OpenAI once you allow it, exactly as on iPhone. The headset asks first, in a window of its own, and sends no labels or photos.
- Your collection is shared with your iPhone through your own iCloud, as above.
9. Your choices
- Turn off the guide's access. On iPhone: Collection → Settings (in the toolbar) → Share with OpenAI. On Apple Vision Pro: Settings → Share with OpenAI. With it off, nothing of yours goes to OpenAI, and the app asks again before anything would. The Gallery, Today's piece and your collection still play.
- Location, camera, microphone and speech recognition are each asked for when first needed, and you can change them any time in your device's Settings app. You can always choose or type a museum yourself instead of using location.
- iCloud. If you're not signed in to iCloud, or turn iCloud off for the app in your device's settings, your collection stays only on that device.
10. Deleting your data
- A piece: in Collection, touch and hold it, then Remove from collection. It's removed from your iCloud copy too.
- Everything on a device: delete the app. Your collection, your photos and the tours on that device go with it.
- Your iCloud copy: on iPhone, open Settings → your name → iCloud → Storage, choose Linger Art, and delete its data. (If you delete the app but keep this copy, reinstalling brings your collection back.)
- On our server: nothing there is linked to you, so there's nothing for us to look up by your name or device. If you'd like a label's text or a photo description we hold for a particular artwork removed, email us with the artwork and the museum, and we'll remove it.
11. Security
Everything the app sends to our server is encrypted in transit with HTTPS. Only we can administer our server, and the guide's service on it can write only to its own cache of tours, labels and pictures. iCloud data is protected by Apple under your Apple Account. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep what we hold small, and nothing we hold identifies you.
12. Children
Linger Art is rated 13+ on the App Store, because museums hang nudes and violent history paintings, and the app shows art as it hangs. It isn't directed to children under 13, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from them. If you believe a child under 13 has sent us personal information, email us and we'll delete it.
13. If you're in the EU, UK or elsewhere
Inquiry Health LLC is the controller of the information described here. We process it on these bases:
- Your consent, for sending your searches, labels, questions and photos to OpenAI. You give it in the app and can withdraw it at any time in Settings (section 9). Withdrawing doesn't affect what was sent before.
- Providing the service you asked for, for looking up a label you scan and delivering tours, pictures and your purchases.
- Our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure and working, for our error log, and in keeping tours, labels and photo descriptions by artwork so the guide improves for every visitor. None of that is linked to you.
You have the right to ask for access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to data portability. Because we hold nothing linked to your identity, we usually can't find information about you in particular, but write to us and we'll help however we can. You also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.
Our server and OpenAI are in the United States, so information you send is processed there. Where the law requires it, we rely on the safeguards in our providers' data processing terms, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
14. If you're in California or another US state
We don't sell your personal information, and we don't share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We don't use or disclose sensitive personal information to infer anything about you. In the last 12 months, the categories we've collected are the ones in section 3 (what you search for, the labels you scan, your questions, photos you send for the guide, and the tracks you've heard) and, briefly, the words of a request that failed in our error log (section 5). We collected them from you, to provide the guide, and disclosed them only to our service providers, OpenAI and DigitalOcean. You have the right to know, delete and correct, and we won't treat you differently for using these rights. To use them, email us; we'll answer within 45 days.
15. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll post the new version here and change its effective date. If a change affects what leaves your device or who receives it, we'll also say so in the app before it applies, and ask again where the law requires your consent.
16. Contact
Questions or requests about your privacy: support@inquiryhealth.com. We answer every message.
Inquiry Health LLC