AI ethics
How we use AI, in plain language.
Porchlight puts an AI companion on the phone with someone's mom or dad. That deserves more than a policy page written for lawyers. Here is exactly what the companion does, what it will never do, and who is in control.
Our promise
The call is for her. The summary is for you.
Porchlight exists because a lot of older adults go a whole day without hearing a friendly voice, and a lot of families go a whole week without knowing how things really are. An AI companion can make that daily call reliably, at the same time, without getting tired or impatient.
What it can't do is replace you. The companion isn't there to be a substitute daughter or a stand-in caregiver. It's there to keep the porch light on between your visits — and to tell you, gently and honestly, when something sounds different.
Our values
Four principles we build against.
Warmth over cleverness
The companion is built to be a good listener, not a show-off. Slow pace, plain words, room for silence. If a call feels rushed or clever, we've built it wrong.
Always clearly an AI
The companion introduces itself as Porchlight and never pretends to be a family member, a nurse, or a friend from town. If someone asks whether they're talking to a person, it says no.
The family stays in charge
You choose the voice, the time, the reminders, and who gets notified. You can pause calls, change the companion, or stop the service entirely — any day, without a phone tree.
Privacy by design
Call recordings and summaries belong to the household. We don't sell them, we don't hand them to advertisers, and we don't use them to train outside models.
Data protection
Consent and data, handled carefully.
Nobody gets called by Porchlight without knowing why the phone is ringing.
What we collect
- The profile details you enter: name, phone number, time zone, call window
- The audio of each daily call and a written transcript
- A short summary and the signals we notice — mood, energy, clarity, breathing
- Reminders you ask us to deliver, and whether they were acknowledged
Consent, every step
- Onboarding requires an explicit consent step before the first call is scheduled
- The first call explains who Porchlight is and that calls are recorded
- The companion will re-explain at any time if asked
- Anyone on a call can say “stop calling me” and we honor it, then tell the family
Keeping and deleting
- Summaries stay available in your dashboard while your plan is active
- You can download a provider-ready report of any date range at any time
- Ask us to delete a call, a person, or the whole household and we do it
- Cancel and we remove call audio and transcripts after the period ends
Safety first
What Porchlight will never do.
A short list is easier to hold us to than a long one. These are hard limits, built into the companion's instructions and checked on every call.
If you ever hear the companion cross one of these lines, email hello@porchlightcalls.com and a person will review the recording.
- Give medical advice, a diagnosis, or a second opinion
- Act as an emergency response service — in an emergency, call 911
- Sell, upsell, or run promotions during a check-in call
- Pretend to be a person, or claim to be a specific family member
- Share summaries with anyone outside the circle the family invited
- Use call content to train third-party models
Human oversight
People stay in the loop.
Summaries are signals, not verdicts
When the companion notices lower energy, confusion, or a cough that wasn't there last week, we say exactly that. We never translate it into a condition or a recommendation. You decide what it means.
A person can look
Calls flagged for concerning language can be reviewed by our team so a real human confirms what the family is being told. We keep that review narrow and log it.
You can stop it in one tap
Pause calls for a hospital stay, swap the companion if the voice isn't right, remove a person from the household, or cancel outright. Nothing is buried.
Our standards
What we can honestly say today.
We'd rather list what's true than post badges we haven't earned. This page is maintained by the Porchlight team and updated as our practices change.
Encrypted in transit and at rest
Call audio, transcripts, and profiles are stored encrypted by our cloud provider.
Access limited to your circle
Only the people a family invites can read summaries. Access rules are enforced server-side, not in the browser.
No data sold, ever
We don't sell or rent personal information, and we don't share it with advertisers.
No third-party model training
Call content is used to produce your summary and nothing else. It isn't contributed to outside training sets.
Deletion on request
Email us and we remove call audio, transcripts, and profiles for the person or household you name.
Not a medical service
Porchlight is not a monitoring device, a clinical tool, or an emergency system, and we don't claim clinical certification.
Questions we haven't answered?
Ask us anything about how the companion works, what it hears, or what happens to a recording. A person replies within one business day.