Privacy policy

Last updated: 3 September 2026

You are trusting us with photographs of your family, including your children. This policy explains exactly what happens to them.

Who is responsible for your data

Loved Stories is the data controller for the information described here. You can contact us about anything in this policy at hello@lovedstories.com, or by post at SIU Offices, 4-6 Greatorex Street, London E1 5NF, United Kingdom.

The photographs you upload

This is the part most parents want to know about, so it comes first.

When you add a character, the photo you choose is sent to our server and passed to the AI image model that draws that character's portrait. While that drawing is in progress we may hold a temporary copy so the job can finish if you close the page; that copy is deleted once the portrait succeeds or permanently fails. We do not keep your photograph afterwards. What we keep is the drawn portrait — the illustration, not the photograph.

While you are still on the character step, your browser also holds on to the photo you picked so that pressing Redraw can have another go at it without asking you to find the file again. That copy stays in the page on your own device. It is never written to our database as a lasting record, and it disappears from the browser the moment you close or reload the tab — at which point Redraw will ask you for the photo again if you want a fresh attempt from it.

The drawing is then reused as the reference for that character across the rest of your book, and is kept with your saved characters so you can reuse them in a later story without uploading a photo again. You can ask us to delete your characters and books at any time.

Children's photographs

Our books are usually about children, so children's photographs are central to the product. We ask you to confirm that any child you upload is a child in your care, or that you have the permission of their parent or guardian.

Our service is sold to adults. We do not knowingly let children create accounts or place orders. If you believe a child has given us information directly, contact us and we will remove it.

What else we collect

Alongside photographs, we hold:

• The memories, names and details you type into the wizard, and the story and artwork generated from them.
• Your email address, used to sign you back into My books and to send you order and delivery updates.
• Order and delivery information, handled by Shopify at checkout, including your delivery address for printed books.
• If you arrived from an advert whose link included campaign parameters, we store those parameters with your book so we can tell which advert led to a sale. That is not a cookie — it is a note on the order.
• Basic technical information such as your approximate country, used to show you the right currency and delivery estimate.

How AI processing works

Your story text and your character illustrations are generated by third-party AI models that we send your inputs to. That means the memories you write and the photographs you upload are transmitted to those providers for the time it takes to produce your story and your artwork.

We use these providers under business terms, and we do not permit your content to be used to train their public models.

Who else sees your information

We share only what is necessary to make and deliver your book:

• Shopify — checkout, payment, order records, and the emails that go with an order (confirmation, and dispatch with tracking for printed books). We never see your card details.
• Our print partner — for printed orders only, they receive your finished book file and the name and delivery address it is being sent to.
• Our hosting and database providers — to run the site and store your books and artwork.
• AI model providers — as described above.

Sharing your book in our marketing — only if you say yes

We never show your book, or anyone in it, in our marketing by default. If you would like to, you can let us feature your finished book in the examples gallery on our website, or share it in our posts on social media. These are two separate switches. We ask on the confirmation screen once your book is finished, and the same choices stay on the My books page. Both are off until you turn them on.

This use is based entirely on your consent. You can withdraw it at any time by turning the switch back off, and your book is removed from that use automatically. Saying no — or changing your mind later — changes nothing about your book or your order.

Where your information is held

Some of these providers operate outside the United Kingdom. Where information is transferred abroad, it is done under the safeguards UK data protection law requires, such as standard contractual clauses.

How long we keep it

Uploaded photographs are not kept once the portrait has been drawn — a temporary copy used during generation is deleted when the drawing succeeds or permanently fails, including on an abandoned book. Your books, characters and artwork are kept so you can return to them from My books, until you ask us to delete them. Order records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we are using it. Email us and we will deal with it — there is no form to fill in.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We would appreciate the chance to put it right first.

Cookies and local storage

On lovedstories.com we use your browser's local storage for things the site cannot work without: which country's prices to show you, keeping you signed in, and remembering the cookie choice you made. These are strictly necessary and are not used for advertising.

We advertise Loved Stories on platforms such as Meta and Google. Tags from those platforms may set cookies and similar technologies on lovedstories.com to measure whether an advert worked, and to help show our ads to people who are likely to be interested. Those tags only load if you accept Advertising cookies. Analytics tags, if we use them, only load if you accept Analytics cookies. You can change your mind at any time from Cookies in the footer.

Checkout happens on shop.lovedstories.com, which is hosted by Shopify and has its own cookie banner. Cookies there cover checkout, payment, and Shopify's own analytics and marketing tools, under Shopify's settings.

Advertising and analytics tags are not loaded in the wizard unless you have accepted those purposes.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and the date at the top. If the change is significant, we will tell you directly.