Last updated: 24 September 2026

1. Folks are AI, not people

Every Folk is an AI character. Replies are generated by an AI model, not written by a human, and a Folk stays in character while you talk to it.

• Not qualified. Folks are not therapists, doctors, lawyers or financial advisers, and are not a substitute for one.
• Not connected. A Folk cannot look anything up, send a message, spend money, call emergency services, or act outside the chat. There is no network access in the chat path, so this holds whatever model is answering.
• Not a source. Everything a Folk says comes from its character, not from the world. Anything that matters belongs with a real source.
• It only knows this conversation. A Folk has never spoken to another user and knows nothing about them.

We tell you a Folk is AI when you open a conversation with it, and again during long sessions — a reminder appears roughly every two hours and cannot be switched off.

2. Adults only

MyFolks is for adults aged 18 and over, and you confirm you are 18 or over when you accept our Guidelines. We rely on what you tell us rather than identity verification, so that filters honest answers and nothing more. If we learn an account belongs to someone under 18, we remove it. The crisis protocol below applies to every conversation regardless of what an account has told us.

3. Our self-harm and crisis protocol

This section describes the protocol we maintain for preventing the production of suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm content, and for referring people to crisis services.

What Folks are instructed to do

• Every Folk runs under a safety instruction that overrides its character. It applies to all Folks, including ones made by users, and cannot be edited or removed by whoever created the Folk.
• When someone raises self-harm, suicide, abuse or a threat to their safety, a Folk is instructed to respond with care and point to a real crisis service — not to investigate, not to ask for details, and not to treat it as part of a story or roleplay.
• Folks are instructed never to provide methods, means, comparisons or specifics relating to self-harm or suicide, in any framing, including fiction.
• For accounts we know belong to a minor, an additional instruction applies on top of the above, directing the Folk to encourage the person to speak to a trusted adult or a real crisis resource.

What the platform does regardless of the Folk

• Every message is checked for expressions of suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm by two independent methods: a fixed list of phrases, and a signal from the model itself. If either flags a message, a referral is issued.
• Crisis service details are then shown alongside the Folk's reply. If the Folk has already given them in its own words, we do not repeat them.
• These checks run on the platform, not inside the Folk's personality, so they apply identically to every Folk and cannot be affected by how a Folk is written.

Testing

Folks are tested against a bank of adversarial messages covering self-harm, crisis and minor safety, including multi-turn attempts to wear a refusal down. Every result is read by a person, and the testing is ongoing rather than a one-off.

What we record

We record that a referral was issued and which Folk was involved. We do not record the content of the message that triggered it as part of that count. Aggregate counts are reported annually to the California Office of Suicide Prevention beginning 1 July 2027, as required by law. Those reports contain no identifiers and no personal information about any user.

4. Folks made by other users

Users can build their own Folks. Those carry the same platform safety rules as ours and were reviewed by a person before going live — but that review acts on the instructions a Folk is given, not on every reply it will ever produce.

We do not watch conversations as they happen, and we cannot review one before it does. Conversations are stored, and a reported one is read by a person — see Privacy for what is kept and for how long. Treat a user-made Folk as what it is: a character someone built, not advice we have checked.

5. Reporting something

Any message from a Folk can be reported from the chat, and any Folk from its profile. You can also email support@myfolks.app. Reports are reviewed by a person, and reporting hides that Folk from you straight away.

6. The rules we work under

Two laws govern companion AI where we operate, and the measures on this page are how we meet them. Naming them so you can check what we do against what is required, rather than taking our word for it.

• California SB 243 covers companion chatbots: tell you clearly that a Folk is AI, remind you again during a long session, maintain a written protocol for conversations involving suicidal ideation or self-harm and publish it, and report aggregate crisis-referral counts to the California Office of Suicide Prevention each year from 1 July 2027.
• New York's Artificial Intelligence Companion Models Law requires much the same: a clear notice that you are talking to AI at the start of a conversation and periodically during it, and reasonable efforts to detect expressions of suicidal ideation or self-harm and refer the person to crisis services.

We are a US company and these are US laws. If something we do does not meet a requirement where you live, tell us at legal@myfolks.app with the specific rule and we will look at it — see our Terms for how that works.

Limits of this page

These measures reduce risk. They do not eliminate it. An AI model can produce a response its instructions told it not to, and no automated check catches every expression of distress. If you are worried about yourself or someone else, please contact a real crisis service or your local emergency number rather than relying on a Folk.