AI safety
The support assistant is a project we run, but the AI model that actually writes the replies is not ours. It belongs to an external AI company and runs on their servers. This page says who that is, what we send them, and what you should keep out of the chat.
Who powers it
Right now the assistant's replies are written by Anthropic, using the
model Claude Haiku 4.5 (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001).
The same model writes the short topic label you see in your chat history when a chat ends.
This is not a model we host: your messages travel over the internet to Anthropic and the reply comes back. We do not own the model and we will change both the company and the model as the project goes on, depending on what works and on the credits we have available. This page always names the one in use, because it reads the same setting the chat does.
Only what is needed leaves
Behind the scenes, the team has been careful to build clean, deterministic rules about what may be sent to the provider. It is fixed code, not the AI's judgement, that decides. For each reply that is: your messages in the current chat, the search results from the SCOUTS knowledge base, whatever a lookup you asked for returned (shop stock, your group, and for logged in adult leaders the directory), and, when you are logged in, your name, membership number, email address, roles and home group, district and region, so it can tailor the answer and hand you to the support desk. Nothing else leaves: not your password, not the wider membership database, not your other chats.
Keep personal and medical details out of the chat
Whatever you type is sent to the provider word for word. Please avoid sharing personal information, yours or anyone else's (ID numbers, addresses, phone numbers), and any medical information. The assistant is told never to ask for them. If your question needs those details, ask for a person: the conversation goes to the SCOUTS support team and they take it from there by email.
Visit counts
Separately from the AI provider, we count visits with Google Analytics. It receives page counts and a few milestones (a chat opened, a first message sent), never what you type, your name or your membership number.