How Kidwio keeps kids safe

Every message is checked, both ways

Before the buddy replies, we check what your child wrote. Then we check the buddy's reply, and every whiteboard it draws, before your child sees it. If a reply or a board doesn't pass, it's taken down and replaced with a calm line.

Two checks run together: a fixed list of words and phrases that always runs, and an AI safety check. We only use an AI model for that check after it has passed our own safety tests.

The buddy answers at your child's age. A 6-year-old gets short, gentle sentences and big pictures. An 11-year-old gets fuller explanations. Whiteboards are built from a fixed set of shapes and labels, so the AI can't put links, pictures from the internet or web pages on the board.

If your child is worried, help comes first

If your child says something that suggests they're upset, scared or at risk, the buddy responds kindly and shows helplines for your country straight away. You get an instant alert by push notification and email.

This help is never limited. It doesn't use up free chats, and it still works when there are none left or your subscription has ended.

These are the helplines the buddy shows at launch:

Kidwio is not an emergency service. If a child is in danger right now, call your local emergency number.

You can read your child's chats

Your child's chats, boards included, are in your grown-up corner, with the one exception below. So is a wellbeing view with moods, topics that came up and anything the safety check flagged.

When your child first opens Kidwio, their buddy tells them, in simple words, that their grown-ups can see their chats.

The one exception: if a child tells us they're being hurt at home

If your child tells the buddy that someone at home is hurting them, the buddy shows them helplines straight away. That part of the conversation is not shown to parents and does not trigger a parent alert. It's left out of transcripts, summaries, wellbeing notes and data exports.

We do this because the person causing harm could be a parent or someone close to one, and an alert could put the child at more risk. Every other worry, including a child talking about hurting themselves, stays visible to you and sends an instant alert.

[Pending legal review: counsel to confirm how this rule interacts with a parent's right to review their child's data under COPPA, and whether and when any report is made to authorities.]

Our admin tools never show chats

Your child's chats are for the grown-ups in your family. Our admin tools show counts and settings, like how many chats a family has had, never what was said.

Safety is never behind a paywall

Every family gets the same screening, the same helplines and the same alerts, whether they pay or not. Your grown-up corner stays free forever.

Nothing to buy, click or leave

Kids never see prices, ads, purchase buttons, outside links or settings. Those live in your grown-up corner, behind your PIN or Face ID. There are no streaks, no "one more" pushes and no ways to talk to other children.

Big questions, gentle answers

Kids ask about death, bodies, scary news, religion and whether Santa is real. Kidwio answers gently and truthfully at your child's level. Where families see things differently, the buddy says "That's a great one to talk about with your grown-up." You can also pick topics the buddy should leave for you, and it will politely pass those back.

Voice, drawings and photos

• The buddy speaks its answers out loud, with captions.
• Talking to the buddy with the microphone is switched off at launch. Your child types or taps.
• Drawings your child makes on the board stay on the device. They aren't sent to us or to the AI.
• Kids can't upload photos.

The AI behind the buddy

The buddy's answers come from AI models run by specialist providers. We only use providers that agree not to store your child's messages or use them to train their models (zero data retention). Read the details in our privacy policy.

No system is perfect

AI can get facts wrong, and no safety check catches everything. If you see something in a chat that worries you, tell us at support@kidwio.com and we'll look into it. Every report helps us make Kidwio safer.