AI chatbot notice

01What the chatbot is

The chatbot is an automated assistant powered by a large language model, the same kind of technology behind tools such as ChatGPT. It has been set up to help with questions about Porifyx: what we do, how we work, the projects we have delivered and how to get started.

It is labelled as an AI assistant in the chat window, and it will never pretend to be a human. Sometimes a member of our team may join the conversation, and when that happens you will be able to see it.

02Where its answers come from

The assistant does not search the internet to answer you. It looks through information we have written and approved, such as our service pages, our portfolio, our process and our general pricing guidance, and builds its reply from that. Where it can, it shows you which page the answer came from.

If the answer is not in that information, it should tell you it does not know and offer to put you in touch with us, rather than guess.

03What it cannot do

• It can be wrong. AI can misunderstand a question or give an answer that is incomplete. Please check anything important with our team.
• It cannot agree a price or a contract. Prices and timelines are only confirmed in a written proposal from us.
• It does not give professional advice. Nothing it says is legal, financial, medical or tax advice.
• It does not make decisions about you. It will never decide anything that has a legal or similarly important effect on you. A person always makes those decisions.

04Talking to a person

You can ask for a person at any point in the conversation, for example by typing “can I speak to someone”. During working hours a member of our team will pick up the chat. Outside working hours, the assistant will take your details and we will reply by email, usually within one working day.

You can also skip the chatbot completely and use our contact form or book a call.

05What happens to your messages

• Your messages travel over an encrypted connection to our AI provider, which writes a reply and sends it back.
• Our agreements with AI providers do not allow them to use your conversation to train or improve their public models.
• We keep the conversation for up to 12 months. We use it to follow up your enquiry, to check the quality of the answers and to improve the information the assistant works from.
• If you share your name, email or company, we treat the chat like any other enquiry and may contact you about it. We will only add you to our newsletter if you separately ask to join.

06How we keep it fair and safe

We follow the UK Government’s principles for responsible AI: safety, transparency, fairness, accountability, and the ability to challenge an outcome. In practice that means:

• we write and review the information the assistant uses, and we update it when our services change;
• we regularly read a sample of conversations to check the answers are accurate and helpful;
• we look at the questions it could not answer and fill those gaps with proper information;
• the assistant has limits on what it will discuss and is told not to make things up.

If the assistant ever says something wrong, unhelpful or inappropriate, please tell us. We read every report.

07Cookies and memory

If you allow functional cookies, the chatbot remembers your conversation as you move between pages, for up to 30 days. If you do not, you can still use it, but it will forget the conversation when you leave the page. Our cookie policy lists exactly what is stored.

08Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of any conversation you have had with the chatbot, ask us to correct or delete it, or object to us using it. You can also ask a member of our team to review anything the chatbot told you. Our privacy policy explains your rights in full and how to use them.