How the assistant works

Effective 1 November 2026

What it is

Big Why is an AI assistant, not a person. It helps you write down what matters to you, your goals and the people in your life, and reminds you of them. It’s a self-help tool, not therapy or medical care, and it can be wrong.

What it remembers

Your values, goals and people, and short facts from your conversations, each marked as something you said or something it inferred. Health details only if you turn that on. You can see and forget every remembered fact on Who I am, and export or delete everything in Settings.

Who runs it

Conversations, notes and letters are written by OpenAI’s models, our AI provider. OpenAI does not train on your data and deletes it within 30 days. Big Why keeps written transcripts and summaries, never audio.

If you are struggling

Big Why is not a crisis service. In the US, call or text 988 any time. In an emergency, call 911 or your local emergency number. When a conversation sounds like a crisis, the numbers appear on the screen.

How a conversation works

• The screen says “AI assistant, not a person” for the whole conversation. Asked whether it is human, it says no.
• Your voice goes to OpenAI while you talk, and comes back as the assistant’s voice. Big Why stores the written transcript and a short summary, never the recording.
• If you turn on looking things up, a short, impersonal question can go to OpenAI’s web search, and the source is shown on screen. Your name, your notes and the people you talk about are never part of it.
• Long-press anything the assistant said or wrote to report it. A person reads every report.

More: how safety works, the Privacy Policy, and the Consumer Health Data Policy.