Cantis: information for the people testers write to
In short
- Cantis Ltd does not store the messages people send to its testers. They pass through for a moment's coaching and are not kept.
- They are not used to train AI, by Cantis Ltd or by its AI providers, which are bound by contract not to.
- Nothing is gathered from the internet or any public source. The only information involved is what is already in the tester's own Outlook or Teams.
- No decisions are made about anyone. Cantis only suggests how the tester might word their own message. The tester decides what to send.
What Cantis does
Cantis is an app that helps people write work messages that land better with the person reading them. A small number of adults are testing it in Outlook and Microsoft Teams. When a tester writes a message, Cantis looks at the draft and the few messages before it, and suggests how the draft might come across.
What is sent
For each suggestion, the tester's draft and up to six recent messages from the email or one-to-one Teams conversation are sent to the AI. Nothing is sent from Teams group chats. Email addresses, web links, phone numbers and email signatures are removed first. Names are kept, so the coaching can tell who said what. To keep the description below up to date, recent messages from those conversations are also sent from time to time. The app checks, to the best of its ability, for sensitive subjects such as health or religion, and leaves out messages it finds.
What stays on the tester's computer
The tester's computer keeps, encrypted, for as long as the tester chooses:
- contact details for the people they have added (name, email address or chat handle)
- how the tester relates to them, for example colleague, manager or client, inside or outside the company
- a short description of how each of those people tends to write, and what tends to work well when writing to them. The AI writes it from their messages, and it never quotes or names them.
The messages themselves are not saved.
What Cantis Ltd keeps
Testers can send us feedback in a free-text box. We ask them not to include details that identify other people, but if they do, that feedback is kept for up to 24 months.
Who handles it
Cantis Ltd's suppliers are listed, with their countries, at cantis.ai/suppliers. AI providers read the text and suggest changes, and do not keep it beyond the 30 days below. Others carry Cantis Ltd's service, without keeping message content, or host its server, which keeps only the feedback described above and text a tester chooses to send with a rejected suggestion, for up to 24 months. One helps review feedback. The AI suppliers do not train on the text and delete it within 30 days, unless the law requires longer. Transfers outside the UK are protected by the UK's approved contract terms or the UK-US data bridge. A copy of a safeguard is available from privacy@cantis.ai.
Why Cantis Ltd may do this
The legal basis is legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): helping testers write clearer, more considerate messages, and testing an app that does that. Cantis Ltd keeps the processing to what the coaching needs. Because it holds no list of the people testers write to, it publishes this notice instead of contacting each person (Article 14(5)(e)).
Your rights
You can ask for a copy of what is held about you, and ask for it to be corrected, deleted or limited. You can also object at any time. Write to privacy@cantis.ai and say who you think used Cantis to write to you. Because the description is on the tester's computer, Cantis Ltd will ask that tester to give you a copy, delete it or switch Cantis off for you, and will tell you what they confirm. Cantis Ltd replies within one month. A tester can also switch Cantis off for any person, after which Cantis does nothing with that person's messages whenever it recognises them.
Cantis is for workplace messages between adults. If a child's information is processed by accident, contact privacy@cantis.ai and the processing will be stopped.
You can complain to privacy@cantis.ai, or at any time to the Information Commission (ICO) at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or 0303 123 1113.
Where the information comes from
From messages in the tester's own Outlook or Teams, what the tester enters in the app, and tester feedback, including feedback from earlier testing of the app. Nothing comes from the internet or any public source.