Privacy
Privacy policy
The short version. We store your account, the things you create, and the logs needed to run and secure the service. Your scripts and prompts are sent to the AI providers that generate your video — that is how the product works, and it is the most important thing on this page. We do not sell your data, and we do not use your content to train our own machine-learning models.
Who we are
Shorts4U is operated by Shorts4u AI, based in British Columbia, Canada. We are subject to British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act ("PIPA") and, where applicable, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act ("PIPEDA").
We have designated a privacy officer who is responsible for our compliance with these laws and with this policy. If you have questions, requests or complaints about how we handle your personal information, contact our privacy officer at contact@shorts4u.ai, and we'll handle it.
What we collect
Your account
To create and manage your account we collect:
- Your email address.
- An optional display name.
- Either a hashed password, or the fact that you signed in with Google.
If you use Google sign-in, we receive your email address and name from Google. We never receive your Google password.
What you create
When you use the studio, we process and store:
- The notes and scripts you write.
- Prompts and storyboards generated from them.
- Your characters and their reference sheets.
- Generated images, voiceovers and video.
- Any images or other assets you upload.
- Job settings — the style, the models chosen, and the record of what each step cost.
This content is necessary to provide the service, generate your videos, and let you revisit and edit your projects.
Technical data
Our systems generate standard server logs when you use the site and studio, including:
- IP address.
- Browser user-agent.
- Pages and API endpoints requested.
- Timestamps.
We use these logs to run and secure the service — for example, to detect abuse of the free trial and to investigate outages or errors.
How and why we use your information
We use your personal information to:
- Create, manage and authenticate your account.
- Provide the studio features that generate scripts, images, voiceovers and video.
- Secure and operate the service, including preventing abuse and fraud.
- Communicate with you about the service and respond to your requests.
We rely primarily on your consent and on the need to perform our contract with you (providing the service) under PIPEDA, PIPA and, where applicable, the GDPR. By creating an account and using Shorts4U, you consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information for these purposes, and to the sharing described in Who your data goes to, except where the law allows or requires us to act without consent.
What we do not collect
We do not run advertising, we do not use tracking pixels or ad networks, and we do not buy or sell personal data. We use Google Analytics to understand how people use the site and the studio, only if you accept it in the cookie banner — see Analytics below.
We do not use your content to train our own machine-learning models. As of 13 August 2026 we also configure our AI providers so that API content is not used to train their models by default, where such options are available — but you should read their terms and privacy policies yourself if this matters to you.
Cookies and local storage
If you reject the cookie banner, this marketing site (shorts4u.ai) sets no cookies — unless you press play on one of the YouTube videos on our home page (see Videos from YouTube). Your answer to the banner is kept in your browser's local storage, not in a cookie, so that declining cookies does not itself set one. Clearing your browser data makes the banner reappear.
The studio app (studio.shorts4u.ai) sets one strictly necessary cookie — a signed session cookie that keeps you logged in. It is not used for tracking and there is no way to opt out of it while staying signed in.
Videos from YouTube
The home page shows shorts hosted on YouTube. Until you press play, each one is just a picture served by us, and nothing loads from YouTube. When you press play, that video loads in YouTube's privacy-enhanced player (youtube-nocookie.com), and from then on YouTube's own privacy policy applies to it: Google receives your IP address and the player may store data in your browser.
Analytics
If you click Accept, on this site or in the studio, we load Google
Analytics, which sets its own cookies (named _ga and
_ga_…, shared between shorts4u.ai and studio.shorts4u.ai, lasting
up to two years). Nothing from Google Analytics loads before you accept, and nothing
loads at all if you reject.
It tells us which pages are visited, where visitors come from, and which steps of the studio people use or abandon: for example that a video was created, a stage was run or a finished video was downloaded. When you are signed in we attach your account's internal ID, a random identifier, so visits from different devices count as one person. We do not send your email address, your name, or anything you write or make in the studio. Google Signals and ad personalisation are switched off, and the data is not used for advertising.
You can change your answer at any time: Cookies in this site's footer, or Cookie settings on your studio account page. Choosing Reject there stops collection and deletes the Google Analytics cookies from your browser.
Who your data goes to
To turn a script into a finished video, parts of your content are sent to specialist providers. This is unavoidable — it is what generates the work — so it is worth knowing exactly who gets what:
| Provider | What it receives |
|---|---|
| OpenAI | Your notes, script and related text, for research, drafting and rewriting |
| Google (Gemini) | Script text, for an independent quality check |
| Google (Analytics) | Pages visited and studio actions, with a random account ID — only if you accept analytics cookies |
| Google (YouTube) | Your IP address and browser data, only if you press play on a video on the home page |
| Google (Sign-In) | Authentication, if you choose Google sign-in |
| ElevenLabs | Your narration text, to generate the voiceover |
| fal.ai | Image and video prompts and reference images, to generate frames and clips |
| Replicate | A portrait and an audio track, only if you use the talking-head narrator |
| Cloudflare | Stores and delivers your generated media, via Cloudflare R2 and its global network |
| Neon | Hosts the database holding your account and jobs |
| Vercel & Fly.io | Host the website and the API |
We engage these companies as service providers to process content on our behalf. Our contracts with them limit their use of your personal information to providing services to us, require appropriate security measures, and are intended to provide a comparable level of protection when your information is processed by a third party.
Each provider processes data under its own terms and privacy policy, which may change over time. You should review those policies if model training and data use by providers is important to you.
We will also disclose data where we are legally required to, and to a buyer if the business is ever sold — in which case this policy travels with it.
Where your data is stored and transferred
We operate from British Columbia, Canada, but the service runs on
servers in the United States: the database is hosted in AWS
us-west-2, the API runs in San Jose, and media is stored in Cloudflare R2
and delivered from its global network. The AI providers listed above process data in
their own regions.
This means your data is transferred outside your country, and while it is held in the US it is subject to US law, including lawful access requests there. That applies to everyone, including Canadian, UK and EU users. Using the service means you accept that transfer.
Where the GDPR applies, for UK and EU users, we rely primarily on the need to perform our contract with you (providing the service), your consent for certain optional features, and our legitimate interests in operating and improving Shorts4U, where those interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.
How long we keep your data
- Account and projects — kept while your account is open.
- Generated media — stays in active storage for three months. After that it is archived rather than destroyed; if you need something back, ask us and we will restore it if reasonably possible. Downloading your finished videos as you go is still the safest habit.
- Server logs — kept for 90 days.
- After deletion — when you delete your account, we remove your personal data and your projects from active systems within 30 days, except where we are required to keep records, for example to meet legal obligations or resolve disputes.
We keep personal information used to make decisions that directly affect you — such as fraud prevention or account closure decisions — for at least one year after the decision, as required by PIPA, and then securely delete or anonymise it when it is no longer needed for legal or business purposes.
Data may persist temporarily in backups, which are rotated on a fixed schedule.
Your rights
Canada (PIPEDA and PIPA)
In Canada you have the right to:
- Access the personal information we hold about you.
- Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete information.
- Withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice.
- Complain if you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal information or a request.
You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it and close your account. Email contact@shorts4u.ai with your request. We may ask you for enough information to verify your identity and locate your records. We will respond within 30 days, as required by Canadian privacy law.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, or to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
UK and EU (GDPR)
If you are in the UK or EU, you additionally have the rights provided by the General Data Protection Regulation, including:
- The right to be informed about how your data is used.
- The right of access to your personal data.
- The right to rectification of inaccurate data.
- The right to erasure — the "right to be forgotten" — where grounds apply.
- The right to restrict processing in certain circumstances.
- The right to data portability.
- The right to object to certain types of processing, including processing based on legitimate interests, and direct marketing.
- The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling.
You also have the right to complain to your own data protection authority if you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data.
Security
We take reasonable security measures appropriate to the sensitivity of the information we hold, including:
- Hashing passwords, never storing them in plain text.
- Encrypting traffic in transit.
- Limiting access to production data to people who need it.
No service can promise perfect security, and we don't. But we work to protect your information and review our safeguards as the service evolves.
Children
Shorts4U is not for under-16s and we do not knowingly collect their data. If you believe a child has an account, contact us and we will remove it and delete any associated personal information, subject to any legal obligations that require us to keep limited records.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes materially, we will say so on this page and update the date at the top. Continuing to use the service after the new policy takes effect means you accept the revised policy.