How Blanq AI works, and what leaves your device

Blanq AI sends part of your document to a server and to Google. The regular Blanq editor does not. This page explains the difference in plain terms, so you can decide which one to use.

What happens in your browser

When you drop a file in, your browser does the first part of the work on your own machine. It reads the PDF, draws each page, cleans the image up so faint lines and dotted rules become readable, and shrinks each page to a fixed size. None of that involves the network, and your original file is never uploaded.

What gets sent, and where

• Page pictures, to find the blanks. Each cleaned-up page image goes to a small service running on the same machine that serves this site. It looks for empty fields and sends back their positions. It does not read your text and it keeps nothing.
• Page pictures, to fill the blanks. Each page is sent to Google's Gemini API, with a number drawn on every blank, along with any answers you gave when it asked a question. Google's handling of that data is governed by their own terms, which you can read on the Gemini API terms page. I do not control what Google does with it.
• To OpenAI, when Google is unavailable. Google refuses requests for hours at a time when their servers are busy, which used to take this whole page down with them. So if Google turns a page away, the same picture goes to OpenAI instead, under their terms. It is the same picture and the same question, just answered by someone else. Most days this never happens.

The example document is the exception. Its answers are recorded, so trying it sends nothing to either company and uses none of your daily allowance. Add your own instructions to it and it goes back to asking the AI for real.

If it needs to look something up (say, a worksheet about a named book) it also sends a search query to Google, describing the public thing it needs, never anything personal about you. Sources are shown on screen so you can check what it found.

So on any given page, one of two companies sees a picture of it, never both, and never anyone else.

Your original PDF file is never sent anywhere. What travels are pictures of the pages, plus any answers you typed when it asked you something.

Files you attach as reference go the same way. If you add a prior form, an ID or a note under "Add details", its contents are sent to whichever company answers the fill, exactly like the page pictures. A photo stays a photo, and a PDF or text file is read down to its words in your browser first. Attach only what you are comfortable sending, and use the regular editor for anything you are not.

What is kept

Nothing about your document. No page images, no text, no answers, no filenames. They exist in memory for as long as the request takes, then they are gone.

What is recorded is limited to running the service:

• How many words the AI processed, and what that cost, so I can see whether this is affordable to keep running.
• Your IP address is used to count usage against the daily limit, but only in memory for the day. It is not written to any file.
• A random identifier stored in your own browser, so your daily allowance is yours and not shared with everyone on your network.

Limits, and why they exist

Each AI request costs me real money, so there are caps: 15 pages per document, and a daily allowance per browser and per network. There is also a ceiling across the whole service. If you hit one, it will say which and when it resets.

If you are on a school or office network where many people share one connection and you are being blocked unfairly, email me and I will raise it.

What this is not

This is an early version, run by one person on a laptop. It is not certified, not audited, and carries no guarantee. Do not use it for documents you are legally required to keep confidential. For anything sensitive, the regular editor works entirely on your own machine and is the safer choice.

It will also never sign anything for you. Signature lines are deliberately left empty.

Questions

Use the contact form. If something here is unclear or looks wrong, I would rather hear it than not.