Privacy Policy (last updated October 18, 2023)

1. Introduction


For purposes of this Privacy Policy, references to “we,” “our,” and “us” mean Ripl, Inc. Ripl, Inc. owns and operates the Alkai mobile app, the website at 
www.alkai.ai, and any other AI powered generative experiences, which provides digital media creation, editing, publishing, and engagement tracking analytics services (the “Alkai Services”). This Privacy Policy explains how and why we collect, use, and disclose information about you collected through the Alkai Services.


We reserve the right to change, modify, add, or remove portions of this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will not, however, retroactively change how we share your personal information without your consent. We will provide notice of any material changes through the Alkai Services or by other means as we deem appropriate before they take effect. Please check back periodically for any changes we may make to the Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the Alkai Services following the posting of changes to this Privacy Policy means you accept these changes.

2. Personal Information We Collect

 

We may collect personal information relating to you as follows:

 

Personal Information You Provide. We collect personal information if you use the Alkai Services or communicate with us as follows:

 

  • When you create an account with us or communicate with us, we will collect information associated with your account or your message, including your name, contact information, username and password, and other personal information through our “Contact Us” form or other forms.
  • When you participate in sweepstakes, contests, or promotions, we collect personal information that your provide us.
  • When you use the Alkai Services, we collect personal information that you share, post, or transmit to the Alkai Services.
  • From third parties, including social media platforms and cloud storage services you use to interact with the Alkai Services. The Alkai Services allows you to combine content you have stored on third-party cloud storage services and post it to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn. When you post content to a social media platform using the Alkai Services, we may have access to information from your social media account, such as likes and comments on posted content, and page or group affiliations. This information allows us to provide you with personalized in-app recommendations. Most social media platforms provide you with a tool to control the information you share with the Alkai Services, which is governed by the policies of the applicable social media platform. In addition, when you interact with Alkai’s social media pages, we may collect personal information that you elect to provide to use, such as your contact details.

 

Personal Information We Receive Automatically from Your Use of the Alkai Services. As you interact with the Alkai Services, we automatically receive the following information:

 

  • IP address and location data
  • Data on browsing activities and patterns, times and dates of logins, the services that you use, details of your transactions through the Alkai Services, and mobile and web software event data
  • Mobile device identifier, general information about the equipment you use to access the Alkai Services, your operating system and browser type
  • The Alkai Services uses cookies. A "cookie" is a small file that we save on your computer's hard drive, which contains the user’s IP address. Our cookies help to give you faster access to pages you have already visited, allow you to personalize your pages, and help you to participate in activities or events on the Alkai Services. They also help us customize our offerings to you. You may choose to disable cookies through your web browser, but doing so may affect your ability to access or use the Alkai Services.
  • Web beacons are small graphic images or other programming code (also known as "1×1 GIFS" or "clear GIFs"). We may include web beacons in the Alkai Services pages and email messages. Web beacons may be used to count visitors to the Alkai Services, to monitor how users navigate the Alkai Services, and to count how many emails that were sent were actually opened.

 

3. How We Use Personal Information


We may use your personal information in the following ways:


Information You Share with Us. When you interact with the Alkai Services, you may set up your personal profile, add and post content, and transmit information through your social media profiles or email accounts. We may retain this information so that, for instance, you can return to view prior information you have sent and monitor and interact with content you have posted.


Marketing Communications from Us. By using the Alkai Services, you agree to allow us to send you marketing communications. If you choose to opt out of our marketing communications, you may still access the Alkai Services, but you may not receive important information about features and functionality of the Alkai Services or other products that may interest you.


Information You Choose to Share Publicly. The Alkai Services allows you to post content (User Content) publicly through third-party sites and services (including but not limited to social media sites). Subject to your profile and privacy settings for the applicable third-party site or service, any User Content that you make public is visible to and searchable by others. If you remove information that you posted, copies may remain viewable in cached and archived pages, or if others have copied or saved that information. Please see our Terms of Service for more information about User Content. In addition to User Content, the Alkai Services may allow you to post comments in public areas, such as social media networks, community pages, message boards, status updates, or feedback sections. Due to their public nature, User Content and comments you share in public areas are not subject to this Privacy Policy. Please be careful about what you choose to share publicly.

 

We may also use your personal information to:
 

  • Provide, administer, and maintain the service you’ve requested or agreed to receive.
  • Enable you to participate in Alkai Services features.
  • Enable you to participate in sweepstakes, contests, and promotions through the Alkai Services.
  • Tailor the content you see when you visit the Alkai Services.
  • Process your registration.
  • Communicate with you and respond to your questions or other requests.
  • Improve and manage the Alkai Services.
  • Send you emails to inform you about new features of the Alkai Services.
  • Contact you with regard to your use of the Alkai Services.
  • Market our products and services to you and send you marketing materials that may be of interest to you, but only if you consent to providing your information for this purpose.
  • Conduct promotional, analytical, and business development activities with our trusted third-party partners.
  • For other purposes with your consent.

 

We may aggregate or de-identify personal information so that it may no longer be used to identify you and use such information to analyze the effectiveness of and to improve and add features to the Alkai Services. Unless you opt-out by sending us an email at alkai-feedback@ripl.com, we may use User Content you provide us to improve our Alkai Services, including to train our own large language models. 

 

4. How We Share Personal Information


We may share non-personally identifiable information, such as aggregated user statistics, with third parties. We do not share your personal information for any purpose other than as described in this Privacy Policy. We may share the information we have collected about you, including personal information, as disclosed at the time you provide your information and in the following circumstances:


Third Parties Providing Services on Our Behalf. We use third parties to host the Alkai Services, design and operate the Alkai Services features, and perform administrative, analytics, and communications services. Services these parties provide include enabling us to send you email newsletters, SMS messages and push notifications, which may contain personalized content or information specific to your use of the Alkai Services, and evaluating providing information to us about the use of the Alkai Services and viewing of our content. We may disclose your personal information to these companies so they can carry out these services. These companies are bound by contractual obligations to keep personal information confidential and use it only for the purposes for which we disclose it to them. We may use: (a) artificial intelligence technology provider, such as OpenAI, and (b) third-party analytics service providers.

 

Third Party Advertising Networks. We disclose certain personal information, including IP address, email address and phone number, with advertising networks to market products and services to you. These third parties includes Google and Meta, which may set and access their own cookies and web beacons on your device. These parties may have access to usage information depending on your account settings with them. They may also have access to pseudonymous or anonymous information about you (such as a unique identification number), which may be combined or associated with information from other sources to identify you and to serve ads to you. See Your Choices and Our Contact Information, below, for information on how to opt-out from third-party targeted advertising.


Sweepstakes, Contests, and Promotions. We may offer sweepstakes, contests, and other promotions (each, a "Promotion") through the Alkai Services that may require registration. By participating in a Promotion, you agree to the terms, conditions and/or official rules that govern that Promotion. If you choose to enter a Promotion, we may disclose your personal information to third parties or the public in connection with the administration of the Promotion, including, without limitation, in connection with winner selection, prize fulfillment, and as required by law or permitted by the Promotion's official rules, such as on a winners' list.


Administrative and Legal Reasons. We may also disclose personal information, including information about your interaction with Alkai Services, if required to do so by law or in the good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) conform to applicable law or comply with legal process served on us; and (b) protect and defend our rights or property, the Alkai Services, its users, or the public.


Business Transfer. We reserve the right to disclose and transfer all information related to the Alkai Services, including, without limitation, your personal information, demographic information and usage information: (i) to a subsequent owner, co-owner or operator of the Alkai Services or applicable database; or (ii) in connection with a corporate merger, consolidation, restructuring, the sale of substantially all of our stock and/or assets or other corporate change, including, without limitation, during the course of any due diligence process.


Third-Party Partnerships. We may engage with trusted third-party partners and advertising platforms to conduct various promotional activities, and these activities may include the use of your personal information to gather business analytics and business development data. We may disclose your personal information to our third-party partners in order to analyze the success and results of these promotional activities or to enable customer retention programs. However, our third-party partners will not be permitted to use your personal information for other communications or promotional purposes.


Managing cookies. Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version. You can however obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via these links:
(a) 
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647?hl=en (Chrome);
(b) 
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-and-disable-cookies-website-preferences (Firefox);
(c) 
http://www.opera.com/help/tutorials/security/cookies/ (Opera);
(d) 
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17442/windows-internet-explorer-delete-manage-cookies (Internet Explorer);
(e) 
https://support.apple.com/en-by/guide/safari/sfri11471/mac (Safari); and
(f) 
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-microsoft-edge-and-privacy (Edge).

Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.
 

5. Links to Other Websites and Services
 

We are not responsible for the practices employed by websites or services linked to or from the Alkai Services, including the information or content contained therein. Please remember that our Privacy Policy does not apply to third-party websites or services. We are not responsible for, and we do not exercise control over, any third parties that you authorize to access your User Submissions or other publicly posted or shared content. If you are using a third-party website or service, such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter) or others, and you allow such a third-party access to your content you do so at your own risk. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information we collect by other means (including offline) or from other sources other than through the Alkai Services.  See Your Choices and Our Contact Information, below, for information on how to opt-out from third-party targeted advertising.
 

6. Security


Personal information collected via the Alkai Services is stored in secure operating environments that are not available to the public. In some instances, personal information is encrypted during storage and transmission. Only those of our employees and agents who need access to your personal information to do their jobs are allowed access, each having signed confidentiality agreements.

 

While we make reasonable efforts to safeguard your personal information once we receive it, no transmission of data over the Internet or any other public network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us or information we transmit to you from the Alkai Services, and you assume all related risks.

We regularly review the information that we collect and store. We retain your personal information for as long as we deem appropriate under our internal data retention policy, or until you request that we delete it. In certain cases, we may be required to retain your data to comply with applicable law or in connection with a legal claim.
 

7. Other Information


Lawful Bases. We collect and process your personal information only when we have a lawful basis to do so. Lawful bases include your consent, the fulfillment of our contractual rights or obligations, complying with applicable law, and the legitimate interests of us or third parties (provided that processing your data for a legitimate interest does not outweigh your rights and freedoms). Examples of a legitimate interest include (i) analyzing user data to maintain and improve the Alkai Services for all users; (ii) providing you with access to the Alkai Services; (iii) providing you with up-to- date information about new features of the Alkai Services; and (iv) engaging third-party providers to deliver certain features of the Alkai Services. You may withdraw your consent or object to a legitimate interest at any time by contacting us at the information provided below.


Cross-Border Transfer. The Alkai Services is hosted on US servers. Any personal information you provide to us will be processed and stored on servers in the US, the laws of which may be deemed by other countries to have inadequate data protection. Accordingly, if you are located outside the US, you consent and continue to consent to the processing and storage of such data in the US. We have agreements in place with our affiliates and contractors that include standard contractual clauses to protect your rights with respect to your data.


Do Not Track. Some browsers incorporate a "Do Not Track" (DNT) feature that, when turned on, signals to websites and online services that you do not want to be tracked. At this time, the Alkai Services does not respond to DNT signals.


Children Under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 16 and do not target the Alkai Services to children under 16. If you are under 16, please do not use the Alkai Services or submit any personal information through the Alkai Services. If you have reason to believe that a child under the age of 16 has provided their personal information to us, please contact us, and we will delete that information.
 

8. Your Choices and Our Contact Information


If you choose not to provide personal information, you may be unable to access or use the Alkai Services.


Accessing Your Personal Information. If you would like to obtain a copy of your personal information gathered by the Alkai Services, or if you would like to correct or delete such information from the Alkai Services’ marketing database, send us an email at
alkai-feedback@ripl.com to submit a request. Depending on the law that applies where you live, you may have additional rights, such as the right to request that we send your information to another organization of your choice (where technically feasible).


Opting Out. We only send promotional and marketing communications with your consent. If you no longer wish to receive these or other communications from the Alkai Services, send us an email at
alkai-feedback@ripl.com.You can stop receiving newsletter email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe link” provided in such communications.

 

Targeted Advertising.  If you do not want us to use information that we collect or that you provide to us to deliver advertisements according to our advertisers’ target-audience preferences, you can opt out by checking the relevant box located on the form on which we collect your data (such as your account registration) of by contacting us at alkai-feedback@ripl.com.  For this opt-out to function, you must have your browser set to accept all browser cookies.

 

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) on the NAI’s website


Improper Collection and Misuse of Personal Information. Please report any improper collection or misuse of personal information provided on the Alkai Services to
alkai-feedback@ripl.com. Depending on the law where you live, you may also have the right to file a complaint with your local data protection authority.