What we hold, and how to make it stop.

01Who we are

The Big AI Secret is a research programme operated by Maybe Solutions Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 09195496, at 11 Brindley Place, Brunswick Square, Birmingham B1 2LP.

Maybe Solutions Limited is the data controller for this programme. We decide what information is collected and why. Our wider privacy policy, covering the Maybe* platform and everything else we do, is at www.maybetech.com/privacy. Where the two documents differ, this one applies to the research programme.

If you have any question about your information, contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@maybetech.com or on 0800 0614 214.

 02What this notice covers

There are several different ways you might have come into contact with this programme, and they work differently. Read the section that applies to you:

• We contacted you and you have never heard of us. Section 3.
• You took the assessment on this website. Section 4.
• You invited your team, or a colleague invited you. Section 5.
• You took part in an interview. Section 6.
• You asked us to send you the report. Section 7.

Sections 8 onwards apply to everyone.

 03If we contacted you and you have never heard of us

What we hold and where we got it

Your name, job title, business email address, sometimes a business telephone number, your employer’s name, sector, approximate size and location, and any professional information you have made public. We hold this about you in your professional capacity. We do not hold anything about your personal life, and we hold no special category information such as health, ethnicity, religion or political opinion.

It came from one or more of the following, and we will tell you which in our first message to you:

• Apollo, a business contact database operated by ZenLeads, Inc. in the United States. Apollo is a registered data broker and provides its own notice to people whose details it holds, at apollo.io/privacy-policy/processing-notice.
• MillionVerifier, which we use only to check whether an email address is deliverable.
• Public sources, such as your company website, Companies House, or a professional networking profile.
• A referral from a colleague, client or partner, in which case we will say who.

You can ask us at any time exactly where your details came from and we will tell you.

Why we are allowed to hold it

We rely on legitimate interests. Our interest is in reaching the people whose experience the research depends on. We have assessed that against your own interests, taking into account that you did not give us your details, that the contact concerns your professional role rather than your private life, that it is a small number of short messages, and that you can stop it at any moment. You can ask us for a summary of that assessment.

We only contact people at incorporated organisations. We do not use these details for any purpose other than this research programme and, if you are interested, telling you about what Maybe* does. We never upload them to an advertising platform. See section 8.

How to make it stop

Use the unsubscribe link in any message, reply with the word stop, or email dpo@maybetech.com. You do not have to give a reason and we will not ask for one. We act on it straight away.

When you opt out we keep a minimal record, your contact details and the date, so that we do not contact you again by accident if your details come back to us in a future update from a data provider. We keep that record indefinitely and use it for nothing else. If you would rather we erased your details completely instead, say so and we will, although we will then have no way of recognising you if your details reach us again.

If you never reply, we send at most four messages and then stop. We delete the details of people who never engage after 24 months.

04If you took the assessment on this website

What we collect

Your name, work email address, job title, organisation name, sector and approximate size, and your answers to the assessment questions. We ask you not to include confidential information, client names or anything commercially sensitive in free text boxes, and we do not need it.

How your result is produced

Your result is generated automatically by scoring your answers against a model built from our research. It is a benchmark and a prompt for discussion. It is not a decision about you or your organisation, it produces no legal or similarly significant effect, and no automated decision is made about you within the meaning of data protection law. A person is always available to talk it through if you want one.

What we do with your answers

Two things.

First, we use them to produce your result and to send it to you.

Second, we include them in the published findings of The Big AI Secret, as statistics combined with everybody else’s. Before anything is published, answers are stripped of your name, your email address and your organisation’s name. Findings are reported as aggregates, or as descriptions such as a marketing director at a mid sized agency. Once combined into a statistic, the figures are no longer personal information and cannot be traced back to you.

If you would rather your answers were used only to produce your own result and not included in the findings, tell us at dpo@maybetech.com and we will exclude them. You can do that at any point before publication and it does not affect your result.

Our legal basis

Consent, which you give when you start the assessment, for producing and sending your result. Legitimate interests for including your answers in the aggregate findings, which you can object to at any time as set out above.

What taking the assessment does not do

It does not sign you up to a mailing list. If you want the full report or updates, there is a separate box to tick and you can leave it unticked. It does not commit you to an interview.

We may follow up once to ask whether your result made sense and whether you would like to discuss it. If you would rather we did not, say so and we will not.

How long we keep it

Your individual answers and result for [24] months, then deleted. The anonymised aggregate figures indefinitely, because they are no longer personal information.

 05If you invited your team, or a colleague invited you

If you are the person doing the inviting

When you enter a colleague’s name and work email address, you are giving us their personal information. Please only invite people who would reasonably expect to hear from you about this, and please tell them it is coming.

We will contact each person you invite, tell them that you invited them, and explain how to decline. If they decline, we delete their details and we do not tell you who declined. We use the details you give us only to send that invitation and, if they take part, to run their assessment.

If someone you invite does not respond, we send one reminder and then stop.

If a colleague invited you

Taking part is your choice. Nothing follows from declining, and we will not tell the person who invited you whether you took part.

Your colleague will see your team’s results only as a combined picture. They will not see your individual answers, and they will not see which answers came from whom. We only show a team result once at least [5] people have completed the assessment, so that individual answers cannot be worked out from a small group. Below that number your colleague sees nothing at all.

We think this matters. The findings are only useful if people answer honestly, and people do not answer honestly when their employer can see what they wrote. If you want to raise something you would not want attributed even in aggregate, email dpo@maybetech.com and we will keep it out of the team result entirely.

To decline, ignore the invitation or reply with the word stop. We will delete your details.

Our legal basis

Legitimate interests for sending you the invitation, which is a small number of messages about your professional role from an organisation your colleague has engaged with. Consent for your participation and your answers, which you can withdraw at any time.

06If you take part in an interview

An interview lasts around 30 minutes and is a conversation, not a survey.

If you give us your mobile number when you book, we use it to remind you about your interview and to send you updates about The Big AI Secret. You can tell us to stop at any time by replying or emailing dpo@maybetech.com, and we will remove your number.

We record interviews so that we do not have to rely on notes. We will ask you at the start, and if you would rather we did not record, we will take written notes instead. That does not affect your ability to take part.

Recordings are transcribed using [transcription provider]. We have data processing terms in place with them and they may not use anything you say for any purpose of their own, including training AI models.

We keep recordings for [12] months and transcripts for [36] months, then delete them. Transcripts are pseudonymised once the report is published, which means your name and your employer’s name are removed.

When we publish we do not name you and we do not name your organisation. If we want to quote you directly, or identify you or your organisation in any way, we will ask you first and show you the exact wording. You can say no, and saying no changes nothing else.

We will tell you honestly that in a small sector, a description can sometimes be enough for a well informed reader to guess who it is. If you tell us something you would rather we did not use even in anonymised form, say so during the interview and we will exclude it entirely.

You can withdraw at any time up to publication and we will delete your recording, your transcript and your contribution. After publication we cannot separate out an aggregate finding your interview contributed to, because it no longer identifies you, but we will still delete your recording and transcript on request.

In return you get a written summary of your session, a benchmark against the other interviews, and the full report before publication. Our legal basis is consent, which you can withdraw at any time without giving a reason and without consequence.

 07If you asked us to send you the report

We hold your name and email address, and use them to send you the report and occasional updates about the research. Our basis is your consent.

Every message has an unsubscribe link. We keep you on the list until you unsubscribe or until [24] months of no engagement, whichever comes first. Asking for the report does not commit you to anything else.

 08Advertising and social media

We advertise this research on social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, which are operated by Meta.

What we do

• We show adverts to people who have visited this website, using cookies and similar technologies. These are set only if you agree to them, and you can withdraw that agreement at any time.
• We create audiences from the contact details of people who have signed up for the assessment or the report, so that we can show them relevant adverts and so that platforms can find people with similar profiles. Details are hashed, which converts them into an irreversible code, before they reach the platform.

What we do not do

We do not upload contact details obtained from business data providers to any advertising platform. If we got your details from Apollo or a similar source and you have never engaged with us, your details stay in our email system and are never disclosed to Meta or anyone like them. We think matching business details bought from a broker against someone’s personal social media account is a step too far, and we do not take it.

We do not use special category information for advertising, and we do not build advertising audiences from anything you told us in an interview or an assessment.

Joint controllers

For the collection of your information through advertising tools on this website and its transmission to Meta, Maybe Solutions Limited and Meta Platforms Ireland Limited are joint controllers. We are responsible for obtaining your consent and for giving you this information. Meta is responsible for what it does with the information afterwards, which is described in its own privacy policy and its controller addendum. You can exercise your rights against either of us.

How to stop it

Use the cookie settings link at the bottom of any page on this site to withdraw consent. You can also control advertising within your own Facebook or Instagram account settings. If you would like us to remove you from our advertising audiences, email dpo@maybetech.com.

 09Who else sees your information

We do not sell your information and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing. The following providers process information on our behalf, under contract:

Where information goes outside the UK, we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, and we assess the risk of each transfer before it starts.

 10AI and your information

Maybe* builds AI software, so it is fair to ask what we do with what you tell us.

We use AI tools to transcribe interviews and to help analyse patterns across responses. We do not use your interview, your assessment answers, your contact details or anything else you give us to train generalised or third party AI models, and our providers are contractually prohibited from doing so.

11Cookies

Cookies that are strictly necessary to make this site work are set automatically. Everything else, including analytics and advertising, is set only if you agree. Rejecting is as easy as accepting, and you can change your mind at any time using the cookie settings link at the bottom of every page.

 12Your rights

You have the right to ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to what we are doing with it, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent where we rely on it.

Where we contact you for marketing or research recruitment, your right to object is absolute. We stop, and we do not weigh it against our own interests.

Email dpo@maybetech.com. We reply within one month and there is no charge.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/concerns or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you came to us first, but you do not have to.

 13Changes

If we change this notice we will update the date at the top. If a change is significant and affects people who have already taken part, we will contact them.