AI & Encryption

Why we use Vi, how that works with Anthropic, and how Circles and DMs stay protected at rest.

Why we use AI

We use AI so people and communities can name what is actually alive for them — who they are, what they care about, and what kind of room they need — without turning that into a performance on a public profile.

Vi, our connection guide, helps members and hubs put that into words. From there, matching can feel closer to intuition: people finding a community at the right time, members finding each other, and hubs finding other hubs to collaborate.

AI use on violette

When you build your profile with Vi—the platform's AI-connection guide—the words you share with Vi are sent to Anthropic (the company behind Claude) so Vi can reply in the moment.

A few things that matter if you're privacy-minded:

  • Your personally identifiable information is not handed over. violette does not send Anthropic your email, screen name, password, birth date, or home location as account fields. Anthropic sees violette as their customer — not your full member file.
  • They don't train their models on your Vi chats under Anthropic's standard commercial API terms. Your answers are used to generate the next reply, not to teach Claude for the whole internet.
  • They may keep the request briefly (about 30 days by default) for safety and operations. That's different from “training on your data.”
  • What you type is what they see. If you write your real name, workplace, or other personal details into a Vi answer, that text goes with the request. If you don't write it, they don't get it from our account records.
  • Vi is not quietly reading our community conversation. Private hub posts and encrypted Circle conversations are not shared to Anthropic in the background. This is about what you share with Vi.

You can edit anything Vi drafts (like a bio), and you can skip optional questions. If you're unsure, only tell Vi what you'd be comfortable sending.

For the full legal terms, see our AI Use Disclosure.

Encryption at violette

In violette, Circles and direct messages are encrypted at rest.

That means the text of Circle posts/chats and of DMs is stored in our database as scrambled ciphertext — not as readable words sitting in the clear. Someone who only got a copy of the database would not be able to read those conversations without also getting the keys that unlock them.

Circles protect conversation text inside a Circle (Feed, Chat, Forum bodies). DMs protect private message text between people. Both use the same kind of protection (encryption at rest on our systems) but different keys — Circle content is tied to your community's key; DMs use a separate platform messaging key.

A few other points that matter:

  • Not everything on violette is encrypted. The main community Feed, Chat, and Forum outside Circles are not encrypted the same way today.
  • It's encryption at rest — not “only your device can read it.” violette's servers can still decrypt when needed to run the service (for example, sending a notification).
  • Attachments, images, GIFs, link previews, and forum titles published in Circles are not encrypted.

If something is sensitive, use a Circle or a DM as text.