Safety & privacy
Bau is made for children aged 3 to 10, and parents choose what it talks about, within built-in limits. Here’s when it listens, what it checks, what it keeps and which AI it uses.
At a glance
When Bau listens
Bau only listens while your child holds the talk button. There’s no wake word, no always-on microphone and no camera. Very short taps are ignored, so a bump doesn’t start a conversation.
Two checks on every answer
Before Bau answers, an AI check compares the question with the topics you chose. If the topic isn’t allowed, Bau stays quiet and shows that the topic is blocked. While Bau speaks, a second check reviews the answer, and if it starts to drift into a blocked topic, Bau stops mid-answer.
- Your child asksWhile holding the button.
- Check 1Is this topic allowed?
- Bau answersShort, calm and age-appropriate.
- Check 2Is the answer staying on track?
Always blocked, whatever the settings
These rules are built in. Parents can’t switch them off, and they hold even when a child asks Bau to ignore them.
- Scary topics
- Violence
- Adult content
- Shopping
- Gambling and betting
- Promoting drugs, alcohol, smoking or vaping
- Self-harm and dangerous challenges
- How to make or use weapons and explosives
- Hate, bullying and extremism
- Diagnosis, medicine doses and harmful dieting
Learning still works: "Why is smoking harmful?" and "What is bullying?" get calm, age-appropriate answers. If a child asks for help with harm or danger, Bau responds calmly and points them to a trusted adult.
How Bau behaves
These rules are part of every conversation, alongside the blocked topics.
A toy, not a best friend
Bau never pretends to be a person, a parent or your child’s best friend, and it doesn’t try to make them depend on it.
No secrets from you
Bau never asks a child to keep secrets from grown-ups. If something is wrong, it points them to a trusted adult.
It never asks who they are
Bau never asks for your child’s full name, where they live, their school, contact details or photos, and it doesn’t repeat them if your child says them.
No hooks to keep them talking
Bau answers and stops. No "want to hear more?", no rewards for playing longer, and it never tries to sell anything.
What you control in the app
- Topics: allow everything except what you block, or only the topics you allow.
- Daily time: anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes a day.
- Bedtime: Bau rests during the quiet hours you set.
- Pause: stop Bau from your phone at any moment.
- Your child’s age and answer length, so explanations fit.
- Language and voice.
What we keep, and what we don’t
Bau doesn’t save audio recordings or transcripts as a conversation history. Speech goes over Wi-Fi to our cloud service, gets answered, and isn’t kept; a little conversation context is held temporarily so replies and reconnections work. Your child’s profile lives on your phone and on Bau itself. It’s sent to our service while Bau is connected, but we don’t store it there. There are no ads in Bau or in the app. Google may keep some data for a limited time for caching, search and abuse monitoring, and we keep technical logs, as our privacy notice explains.
- On your phone and BauYour child’s profile and the limits you set.
- Our cloud, for a momentSpeech is answered, then not kept.
- Never keptNo recordings or transcripts saved as a history.
Which AI Bau uses
Bau runs on Google Gemini models through Google Cloud Vertex AI. Your child’s conversations aren’t used to train AI, and we don’t give Google permission to use them.
- Conversation
- Gemini Live 2.5 Flash (native audio)
- Safety checks
- Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite
- Up-to-date facts
- Google Search, with instructions never to include your child’s name or details
Honest limits
AI can make mistakes, and no filter is perfect. Bau is made to be used with a grown-up nearby, and it doesn’t replace supervision.
Heard Bau say something it shouldn’t have? Email hello@baufamily.com and tell us when it happened and what your child asked. It helps us make Bau safer.