Privacy notice

Thuto AI is built so that learners — many of whom are minors — can use it without providing any personal information. This notice explains, in plain language, what we process and why (Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013).

Grade R–7 learners are expected to use Thuto AI together with a parent or guardian; the app asks the guardian to confirm they are present before those sessions start, and the tutor addresses the guardian and child as a team.

What we process

• A random guest identifier stored in your browser. It is not linked to your name, phone number or school — we don't ask for any of those.
• Your questions and answers, processed to generate tutoring responses and marking feedback. Conversations are kept on your own device; on WhatsApp, a short recent history is kept for two days so follow-up questions work, then deleted automatically.
• Practice statistics — topic names and marks only — kept per guest identifier for up to 180 days to steer practice toward your weaker topics.
• Usage counters (questions per day, per guest and per network) to keep the service free and fair. Deleted automatically after a few days.

Who processes it

Our systems run on Amazon Web Services in the Africa (Cape Town) region. Tutoring responses are generated by Anthropic's Claude API: Anthropic does not train its models on this data and retains API inputs for a limited period (currently up to 30 days) for abuse prevention. If you message us on WhatsApp, Meta processes those messages under its own terms.

What we don't do

• No advertising, no sale of data, no tracking across other sites.
• No account, email, phone number or name is required to learn.

Your choices

Clearing your browser storage removes your guest identifier and local conversation history. To have server-side practice statistics for your guest id removed sooner than the automatic expiry, contact the operator via the repository at github.com/ItuT/dbe-webscraper.

Sources cited in answers are official Department of Basic Education documents. Thuto AI is an independent study tool and is not affiliated with the DBE.