In the cloud
Filmina runs on Google Cloud servers in the United States, not on your computer. Your browser sends the deck, receives the explanation and the audio, and shows them: the heavy lifting happens on the other end.
What happens over there
- The one that explains. Gemini, Google's model, through Vertex AI. It reads each slide, text and image, and writes the explanation, the questions, the summary, the practice sessions and Mina's answers.
- The one that listens. The same Gemini turns what you say out loud into text: a dictation, the class you transcribe, a slide you explain in your own words. Also the audio you upload as material.
- The one that speaks. Google Cloud Text-to-Speech voices: two per language, Mina and Mino.
- The one that reads your notes. Cloud Vision, Google's text recognition, for the notebook photos you add to a note. It reads handwriting.
- Everything else, on our own server. That is where PowerPoint, Keynote and OpenDocument decks get converted to PDF, and where the subtitles of a YouTube video you add as material are fetched.
Nobody trains models on your documents. Google commits not to use what reaches it through Vertex AI for training without permission, and we do not give it; Filmina does not train any model on what you upload, write or say either.
What gets stored
Everything stays in your account, on Google Cloud in the United States, until you delete it: nothing expires just because time went by.
- The deck you uploaded and its rendered slides.
- The explanations, the questions, the summary and the audio that were generated. That is why listening again does not use minutes.
- Your notes, your notebook photos, the text of the classes you transcribed and what you talked about with Mina.
- The class material: books, documents, audio and video subtitles.
- Your practice and review sessions, where you are in each document and how long you studied each day.
Microphone audio is not stored. When you dictate, transcribe a class or talk to Mina, the audio goes to the server, gets turned into text and is thrown away: the text is what stays. An audio file you upload as material, on the other hand, is stored like the rest of your material.
How deleting works
You delete a document from the app and everything generated from it goes along, as explained in Documents. Deleting your account, from Settings, erases everything of yours: documents, notes, material, sessions and files. Whatever is deleted also leaves the backups within 7 days. What remains, no longer tied to your account, are the payment records the law requires.
Why the cloud
Because that way your computer does not do the heavy lifting. There are no multi-gigabyte models to download, it uses less battery while you study, and it runs just as well on an old laptop as on a phone. And what you study on one you pick up on the other.
The flip side is the connection: without internet you cannot study. If it drops, Filmina tells you that you are offline.
The legal details of all this, provider by provider, are in the privacy policy.