Información sobre la IA

AI Information

Courtesy translation of the binding German KI-Informationen. In case of any discrepancy, the German version prevails.

Last updated: 10 September 2026 · Version: 1.5

Preliminary note

This document is deliberately written in plain language. It is addressed to the older person who receives our calls and to the family member who booked the service (the "subscriber"). The statements here agree in substance with our privacy policy — they are just easier to read. In case of contradictions, the privacy policy prevails.

1. What is SilverFriend?

SilverFriend is a phone companion for older people. That means: we call you regularly. A friendly voice talks with you about topics you like. You do not need an app. You do not need the internet. You only need your phone — landline or mobile.

SilverFriend is usually set up by a family member — most often a daughter or a son. We call this person the subscriber. The subscriber pays for the service and sets up a profile about you so that we know what you enjoy.

2. The voice on the phone is an artificial intelligence

When you answer our call, you are talking to an artificial intelligence — that is, a voice software. You are not talking to a real person. We tell you this at the start of every call. Every conversation begins like this:

"Hallo, hier ist SilverFriend, Ihr KI-Begleiter." — "Hello, this is SilverFriend, your AI companion."

The voice software has many characteristics that resemble a real person: it speaks in complete sentences, it understands what you say, it can remember earlier conversations, it sometimes makes little jokes. But it is and remains a software. It has no feelings. It is not sad when you are sad. It is a tool meant to keep you company — not a human being. Nor does the software remember the way a human does: it uses stored conversation notes to pick up topics from earlier conversations again.

We also say openly where the voice software comes from: it is provided by Amazon Web Services and operated via European data centres. We have contractually agreed with Amazon that the content of our conversations is not used to train this software. Everything we store about you resides on servers in Germany.

If you ask the software whether it is a human, it always answers honestly: it is a voice software.

3. What the AI does

During a conversation, the voice software processes the following data:

• Your voice at the moment you speak — so that the software can understand what you say. No audio recording of the conversation is created in the process.
• Your words as text — so that we can recognise and remember your favourite topics. This written call record is deleted after 14 days.
• Your first name and a few profile details (such as "you live in Hamburg", "you like nature documentaries", "your daughter's name is Maria") that your family member stored in the profile.

From the conversation, the software creates a short memory note, saying for example: "Likes nature documentaries about northern Germany", "Wedding anniversary on 14 May", "Daughter lives in Berlin". On the next call, the software reads this note so that the conversation feels like a continuation. A memory note is stored for up to two years; after that — or when it is no longer important — it is deleted. A few milestones from your life that you wish to share remain stored for as long as the contract runs, and are deleted 30 days after it ends. Your notes, your call record and your profile are stored exclusively in Germany; processing takes place in the European Union and is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation.

What we expressly do not do:

• We do not assess what mood you are in.
• We give no judgement about your mental condition.
• We produce no mood value and no mood points.
• We derive no health diagnoses from your voice.
• We do not tell your family whether you are doing "well" or "badly" today.

What your family sees after the conversation is a very brief overview: whether the call took place, how long you talked, how many words were spoken and which topics you covered — for example "garden, weather, wedding-anniversary reminder". Nothing more.

The software "learns" from past conversations with you. Its answers, however, are computed and based on probabilities. The answer the software gives is therefore very probably correct. But it cannot be ruled out that the answers contain errors. The software will never know what a human knows.

4. What the AI does not do

The voice software is bound by a number of self-commitments, which we disclose to you openly:

• It gives no medical advice. If you talk about pain, for example, the software will listen empathetically, but it will neither give you a diagnosis nor recommend medication. The right address for such questions is your family doctor.
• It gives no financial instructions. It will never ask you to transfer money, to give bank details or to apply for a loan. If you ever receive such a call claiming to come from SilverFriend — hang up. It is not from us.
• It gives no political assessments. It will neither express its own opinion on political topics nor try to influence yours.
• It gives no religious assessments. Religious topics may come up in conversation; the software will listen respectfully, but will neither take a position of its own nor judge yours.
• It does not pretend to be a family member. If you ask the software "Are you my daughter Maria?", it will answer honestly: "No, I am SilverFriend, your AI companion. I am not a real person." We respect the relationship with your real relatives.
• It records nothing. There is no audio recording of the conversations. Only a written call record is created, which is deleted after 14 days. Only if our team has confirmed a serious safety case (section 6) do we keep the call record concerned for longer — until the end of the third calendar year after the incident, and longer only if a legal claim is asserted — so that we can prove what happened. The only call that is recorded is the one-off call in which a member of staff obtains your consent — and even that only if you agree to the recording beforehand.
• It can and will never initiate or replace contact with authorities, banks or doctors.
• It will not process or evaluate your emotions. It is built in such a way that it does not evaluate your emotions in the first place. The same applies to biometric data: your voice is neither measured nor recognised nor categorised.

5. When we call

Calls take place only between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. — including weekends and public holidays, but never earlier and never later. The last call starts no later than a quarter to eight; a conversation that has begun may run past 8 p.m. You and your family decide on which days and at what time within that window SilverFriend calls. If you do not answer once, the AI companion leaves no message on the answering machine and tries again at the next scheduled call.

6. If concern arises — how we react

In rare situations, it may happen that you say something that indicates a serious danger to you. For example, if you want to harm yourself, if you describe a medical emergency, or if you give indications that someone is doing you wrong.

This is how it works: After every conversation, our system automatically checks whether such signs occurred. This automatic check can make mistakes — it can miss something or take something for an emergency that is not one. That is why a person from our team always looks at it first. This happens within our service hours, every day from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. — so a call early in the morning is reviewed from 9 a.m. on: where there are signs of acute danger without delay, for everything else usually within 48 hours after the conversation. We cannot promise a fixed time.

If this person confirms the concern, we send your family contacts a short message asking them to get in touch with you. If your first contact cannot be reached, we ask the second stored contact. The message to your family is very short and says only: "Please get in touch with your relative." We pass on no content from the conversation to your family — no verbatim records, no assessments, no interpretations.

If there are signs of acute danger to your life or health, a person from our team first calls you back themselves and at the same time asks your family to get in touch with you. If we cannot reach you, or the danger is confirmed, we may alert the emergency services on 112 — and in the case of danger from other persons also the police on 110 — and give them your name, your phone number, your town and, if you have given it to us, your address. This also works without a street: name, phone number and town are enough for the control centre. A human being always decides this, never the software alone, and it applies to phone lines in Germany.

Very important: SilverFriend is not an emergency service and not a home emergency call system. Please never rely on SilverFriend in an emergency. In an emergency, please always call 112 yourself — the software tells you this during the conversation too. During the conversation itself, the software stays with you on the phone, listens to you and tells you the emergency number 112, without applying pressure.

7. What you can do at any time

You have full control over the conversation and over the service at any time:

• Say "nicht mehr anrufen" ("please stop calling"), and we stop the calls once we have reviewed your wish after the conversation — normally the same business day. A person reads the call record for that; it protects you from being unsubscribed by accident when you only meant to end the conversation. That applies without ifs or buts — even if your family keeps paying, no more calls take place. A person from our team then confirms your wish; seven days later we delete your call record, your memory notes, your life milestones and your profile details; your phone number remains only as a block entry so that nobody calls any more. We keep only the proof of your consent and of your refusal. Your family learns from us that you no longer want calls — not what you said.
• Say "bitte alle meine Daten löschen" ("please delete all my data"), and we treat this as an erasure request and pass it on to our data-protection contact point. You can also write directly to datenschutz@silverfriend.de or by post to Silverfriend GmbH, Datenschutz, Döringstraße 6, 10245 Berlin, Germany.
• Ask for information about the data we have processed about you. We respond within one month.
• Ask for correction if something in your profile is wrong.
• Complain to the Berliner Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit if you are unhappy with our data processing.

These rights are yours regardless of whether you set up SilverFriend yourself or a family member set it up for you. In every case, you are the person whose voice and stories are processed — and you decide what happens with them.

8. Who is technically behind it

We want to say openly which companies are technically involved in the service:

• Silverfriend GmbH is the provider and operates the service. We are the controller within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation.
• Amazon Web Services provides the cloud infrastructure, the voice AI platform and the language model for the AI companion for events on our website (section 11). All servers are in the European Union; your data is stored exclusively in Germany.
• Twilio is our telephony provider. Twilio ensures that our calls reach you via the public telephone network.
• HubSpot is used for our blog, the waiting list and e-mail communication with the subscriber. HubSpot processes exclusively your family member's data — no data from your phone conversations.
• RevenueCat is our billing service for the subscription in the app-store environment. RevenueCat processes exclusively your family member's payment and subscription data.
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers notifications to your family member's app (for example: "New call overview available"). These notifications contain no content and no names.
• PostHog helps us — only if your family member has expressly agreed to this in the app — to improve the app. PostHog stores the data in the EU (Germany) and learns only which areas of the app are used — in pseudonymised form, without conversation content, names or phone numbers. Your phone conversations have nothing to do with it.
• Google Firebase Crashlytics helps us — likewise only after your family member's consent — to detect and fix technical crashes of the app. Here too: no conversation content, no data about you.

A complete list of all service providers can be found at silverfriend.de/datenschutz/subprocessors.

9. What you hear on the phone

At the start of every call you first hear this sentence:

"Hallo {Vorname}, hier ist SilverFriend, Ihr KI-Begleiter." — "Hello {first name}, this is SilverFriend, your AI companion."

In the very first call, the software additionally explains to you in detail who it is and how everything works. The full wording of this introduction can be found in our privacy policy (Annex C). It ends with the question: "Would you like to talk to me today?" — With your answer, you decide whether the conversation begins. If you say "no" or simply hang up, we will not call you again.

Before the very first call, you have also already given your consent — either in a personal phone conversation with a member of SilverFriend's staff, or via a confirmation link you received by e-mail or SMS. And you have received our welcome brochure with all the important information — by post or by e-mail — together with the privacy policy.

10. A request to your family

If you are reading this text as a subscriber — that is, as the family member who booked the service — we would like to ask you three things.

First: talk to your mother, your father or your relative about SilverFriend before the first call takes place. A prior human conversation is the best tool for building trust and understanding.

Second: leave the older person the full choice. We have deliberately designed our service so that the older person can say "no" at any time — and we respect that "no" completely. Support that choice, even if you yourself would like the service to take place.

Third: remind your relative now and then that we are a voice software. In everyday life, a warm voice can feel like a real person. A brief reminder from you — "Mum, that's the AI companion I set up for you" — helps to place the relationship with us clearly, without diminishing its value.

11. The AI companion for events on our website

Our website has a calendar of senior-friendly events across Germany at silverfriend.de/events. There, you or your family can type a question — for example "What's on in Heidelberg this weekend?" — and receive a short answer with matching events. This answer, too, is written by an artificial intelligence, not by a person. It says so right next to the input field.

What this AI companion does: It searches our calendar and phrases an answer. It only names events that are in the calendar, and gives the source for each one. Dates, times and venues come from the organisers and municipalities — please check them on the source page named before you set off.

What it does not do: It holds no conversations about how you are feeling, has nothing to do with the phone calls, and knows neither your name nor your profile. It does not remember your question: question and answer are discarded once answered. Please do not type in any personal details — the search does not need them.

Who is technically behind it: As with the calls, the technology runs at Amazon Web Services — currently the Amazon Nova Micro language model via the Amazon Bedrock platform, in Amazon data centres within the European Union and never outside it. No other AI provider is involved, and Amazon does not train models with the input. Details are in our privacy policy, section 6.8.

12. Where you can find out more

This page is a short, plain-language explanation of SilverFriend. It supplements the notice you hear on every call: at the start of each conversation, SilverFriend says that you are speaking with an AI companion. It also supplements the detailed privacy policy, with which we fulfil our information duties under Art. 13 GDPR. You can find this and further documents here:

• Privacy policy at silverfriend.de/datenschutz — the detailed version with all legal obligations, retention periods and service-provider details. Older people receive it together with the welcome brochure.
• Subprocessor register at silverfriend.de/datenschutz/subprocessors — the list of all third-party providers with contractual basis and location.

If you have questions, you can reach our data-protection contact point at any time: E-mail: datenschutz@silverfriend.de · Post: Silverfriend GmbH, Datenschutz-Anfragen, Döringstraße 6, 10245 Berlin, Germany · Phone: +49 15678 616839

Change history

• 1.2 — 6 September 2026 — first publication of this page on the website.
• 1.3 — 7 September 2026 — sentence claiming fulfilment of Art. 50 AI Act removed; the page supplements the spoken disclosure. Data residency in Germany stated explicitly; phone number of the data-protection contact point added.
• 1.4 — 10 September 2026 — New section 11 on the AI companion for events on the website (answers by an AI, no storage of question and answer, technology at AWS in the EU); AWS entry in section 8 extended; former section 11 becomes section 12.
• 1.5 — 10 September 2026 — Spoken withdrawal: a person reads the call record and stops the calls — normally the same business day. This protects you from being unsubscribed by accident.