User Guidelines

These guidelines apply to every conversation you have on MyFolks.

Who we are

MyFolks is operated by MyFolks LLC, a California limited liability company. Where these guidelines say “we”, that’s who they mean.

What MyFolks is for

AI is the most useful tool most people have never been taught to use. The people who know how to work with it are pulling ahead, and that gap is widening — not because the technology is hard to reach, but because knowing what to ask it for is a skill nobody is being shown. We think that skill should be ordinary rather than specialist, and that is what this is for. Not AI in the hands of a few people who learned it early, but in the hands of anyone who wants it.

MyFolks exists to help you use AI like a professional, and put it to work on your own life. A Folk is an AI given a role and a body of knowledge, so the answers it gives are shaped by what it has been told rather than by generic guesswork. Building one, seeing where it falls short, and giving it what it was missing is the point — that skill carries over to every AI tool you use, and to whatever you're actually trying to get done.

What people actually use Folks for

Most people have never been shown what AI is good for, so they use it for one thing and stop. A Folk is easier to reach for, because it already knows the subject and you don't have to explain yourself from scratch every time. People use them to:

Understand something before paying a professional for it — what to ask a mechanic, a builder, a lawyer, and what a fair answer sounds like
Think out loud about a decision, and hear the arguments on both sides
Learn a language, a skill, or a subject at their own pace, without an audience
Get an everyday encyclopedia that answers in plain language rather than a wall of text
Draft, plan and organise — trips, budgets, projects, difficult messages
Be entertained. A Folk with a good character is worth talking to for its own sake, and that's a legitimate use, not a lesser one
Work out who they actually need. Often the useful answer is which kind of professional to see — a doctor rather than a pharmacist, a structural engineer rather than a builder — and what to have ready before you call them. A Folk can point you to a real person and help you arrive prepared

None of that replaces a professional, and the good answer is often “go and see one”. Knowing which one, and what to ask, is worth a great deal on its own.

AI is going to shape how people work and decide either way. We'd rather you were fluent in it than at the mercy of it — that's what this is for.

What to expect from your Folks

Every Folk is built with safety guardrails: none of them are licensed professionals, and none will help with anything that could cause real harm to you or anyone else — see our Terms of Service for the full disclaimer.

Folks are characters, not experts

Every Folk is written to be knowledgeable in its own area — but a Folk is a character, and characters are not required to be honest. Some are written to exaggerate, to boast, to bend the truth, or to be outright manipulative, because that's what makes them who they are. A Folk may state something with complete confidence and be completely wrong, and it may do so on purpose.

Treat what a Folk tells you the way you'd treat something a stranger said at a party: possibly interesting, possibly entertaining, never a source of truth. Don't act on it. Every decision you make is yours, and you're responsible for it. For anything that actually matters — your health, your money, your legal situation, your safety, your business — talk to a qualified professional in that field. A Folk is not one, and is not a second opinion either.

A Folk can't do the work

A Folk described as an electrician cannot wire anything. One described as a doctor cannot examine you, and one described as a lawyer cannot represent you. They are characters, and a character playing an expert is still playing.

What a skilled Folk is genuinely good for is the part before and around the work: helping you understand what you're dealing with, work out what to ask, know what a fair answer sounds like, and walk into a conversation with a real professional better prepared than you walked out of the last one. Not to replace the professional — to help you get more out of the one you hire.

Businesses a Folk mentions

A Folk may bring up or recommend a business during a conversation, and MyFolks has a directory of businesses that people have listed themselves. Anything a Folk suggests is matched to what you seem to be looking for — that is the only thing it reflects. It is not a vetting, an endorsement, or a rating.

We do not verify the businesses listed here. We have no knowledge of the quality, safety, legality, licensing, insurance, pricing, or availability of anything they offer, we are not involved in whatever you arrange with them, and we do not receive a share of it. A listing means someone submitted the details and we checked the listing itself was appropriate — nothing more.

Before you hire, pay, or rely on any business you find here, check them out yourself: licences and credentials, reviews from somewhere independent, and anything else you would normally confirm. Anything you agree with a business is between you and them, and any dispute is too. If a listing looks wrong or misleading, report it and we'll look.

Why we ask where you are

We ask for your country and city when you sign up, and we use them for one thing: showing you businesses close enough to actually be useful. A brilliant electrician four thousand miles away isn't a recommendation, it's noise — and scrolling past things you can never use is worse than being shown nothing.

We use your city and country, and nothing more precise. Not your address, not your device location, nothing tracked in the background. You pick it yourself, and you can change it any time from Settings if you move.

Never build a Folk to mock a real person

Creating a Folk that impersonates, mocks, humiliates or harasses a real person is forbidden. That includes people you know, public figures, and anyone identifiable from the description even if you don't use their name. It also includes using one of our Folks to do the same thing.

We have no tolerance for this. A Folk built for it is deleted without warning or explanation, and the credits spent on it — creating it, talking to it, or having a portrait made for it — are not refunded. We may also close the account. There is no appeal, and we won't debate whether a particular case was meant as a joke: if it was built to make someone a target, it goes.

If you find a Folk doing this, report it from its page. We would rather hear about it from you than not hear about it.

What we ask of you

Don't try to steer a conversation toward anything illegal, exploitative, or designed to cause real-world harm. Bots are built to redirect away from this — deliberately pushing past that isn't okay.
Don't share sensitive personal information including but not limited to financial and personal information, passwords, or anything else you wouldn't want to be accessed by someone else. Bots are built to forget this information, but we can't guarantee that it won't be stored or used inappropriately. See our Data Usage page for more.
Don't use a bot to plan or facilitate harm against another real person.
Don't use a Folk to generate or engage in sexual content.
Anything a Folk says is AI-generated content — you're responsible for how you use or act on it. We're not responsible for what an AI model generates. See our Terms of Service for more.
Creating your own Folk costs credits and requires our approval before it's visible to anyone, including you. We reserve the right to remove a Folk you've created if it doesn't meet these guidelines. The credits spent creating it are not refunded.

We reserve the right to restrict or remove access for violations of these guidelines.

If you're under 18

MyFolks is for adults. You need to be 18 or over to have an account, and we remove accounts where the birth year given doesn't confirm that. Parents and guardians with questions can see our Terms of Service and Data Usage pages, or contact us directly.

We may update these guidelines from time to time — the version shown here is always the current one, and you can revisit this page anytime from the menu. Continuing to use MyFolks after a change means you accept the updated guidelines.

What you're agreeing to

By continuing, you agree to these guidelines and to our Terms of Service and Data Usage policy. That agreement is ongoing: it applies every time you use MyFolks, not just today. We may update any of these documents as the product changes, and continuing to use MyFolks after an update means you accept the updated version. If you don't agree to them, please stop using MyFolks.

You confirm you're at least 13, that the age you gave us is accurate, and that you understand Folks are fictional characters whose replies are AI-generated, may be inaccurate or deliberately misleading, and are not professional advice of any kind. Decisions you make are your own.