Photo & AI Policy

• We use uploaded photos to check whether they can be drawn from, draw the recipient’s character and make your book.
• We never use them to train AI models — not ours, not anyone’s.
• We never sell them, share them with advertisers or post them publicly. The Privacy Policy explains which providers process them.
• For photos uploaded from the time this retention policy takes effect, the deletion deadline is 30 days after the book is delivered, never later than 120 days after upload. While any paid order using a photo is still progressing toward delivery, the deadline is 120 days after upload. If several orders use a photo and all have been delivered, the 30 days run from the latest delivery. When no delivery is coming (an unpaid, abandoned, canceled or refunded order), the deadline is 30 days after upload. Photos uploaded before this retention policy took effect keep their earlier rule: 120 days after upload while a paid, unrefunded order references them, otherwise 30 days after upload.

Every Hello Sorry recipient and sidekick is an adult. We do not accept photos of children, and we decline any order that features one.

Only upload photos of people you know who would be okay starring in a gag book. You confirm this before uploading. No coworkers you barely know, no celebrities, no exes.

Each photo you upload goes to Anthropic for the photo check. The recipient’s reference photos, the check’s appearance description and our prompts go to OpenAI to draw their character. The drawing goes to Anthropic for its safety check before we show it to you. All of this happens before you pay.

Their face is the part we aim to get right; everything else goes wrong on purpose: extra fingers, spare arms, signs in a language that doesn’t exist.

You see and approve the character before paying. You can redraw it yourself for free within the daily drawing allowance shown in the creator. First drawings and redraws count toward the same per-browser total, which resets at midnight UTC. A shared-IP limit or an operator pause can also stop new drawings.

The book is written and drawn after purchase. There is no full-book preview before printing.

We roast situations and choices, never bodies. Our books do not joke about anyone’s appearance, weight, race, religion, disability, gender or sexuality, and the pictures are never sexually explicit — the innuendo stays in the words.

Ask us to delete the photo, the book or your data at any time and we will. If you are the person in a book and did not want to be, email hello@hellosorry.com — we will remove you and stop any book that has not printed.

The character drawing is AI-generated, guided by your photos, and checked before we show it to you. The bad hands are a feature. The good face is the point.