AI Explorers is built for schools, and the safety of the children who use it comes before everything else. This page explains, in plain language, how we protect learners, how we comply with South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA), and the guardrails we put around the AI tools your learners interact with. It sits alongside our Privacy Policy and PAIA Manual.
Children learn about AI on our platform inside a controlled, age-appropriate environment. We design every feature on the assumption that a Grade 1 to Grade 12 learner may use it. That means restricted tooling, filtered content, human oversight, and no open-ended exposure to the wider internet through our AI features.
Under POPIA, the school is the Responsible Party for its learners' personal information, and AI Explorers acts as an Operator processing that information on the school's behalf and on its instructions. We process learner personal information only for the purpose of delivering the educational service, and we do not use it for our own unrelated purposes.
We apply the eight POPIA conditions for lawful processing: accountability, processing limitation, purpose specification, further-processing limitation, information quality, openness, security safeguards, and data-subject participation.
Our registered Information Officer is responsible for POPIA compliance and for handling any query or complaint about learner data:
We keep learner data to the minimum needed to run the service. Depending on how a school configures the platform, this may include:
We do not ask learners for sensitive personal information, financial details, or contact information beyond what the school provides to set up accounts.
Because our users are children, processing is authorised through the school as Responsible Party, which is expected to obtain the necessary consent from parents or legal guardians in line with POPIA (which requires a competent person's consent for children under 18). Schools remain responsible for informing parents and for holding any consents required by their own policies and by law.
The AI tools learners use on AI Explorers are deliberately constrained:
No automated safety system is perfect. If you or a learner encounter content that seems inappropriate, please report it using the details in Section 11 so we can investigate.
We do not use learner personal information to develop, improve, or train generalised artificial intelligence or machine-learning models. Where AI features rely on third-party providers to generate responses, we select providers on the basis that data submitted through their APIs is not used to train their models, and we limit what is sent to them.
We protect learner information using commercially acceptable technical and organisational measures designed to guard against loss, theft, and unauthorised access, disclosure, or modification. Access to learner data is restricted to authorised personnel who need it to operate and support the service.
No method of transmission or storage over the internet is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security; however, we work continuously to keep our safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the data we hold.
We retain learner information only for as long as the school uses the service or as required to meet legal obligations. When a school ends its use of AI Explorers, or on the school's instruction, we will delete or return learner personal information within a reasonable period, except where we are legally required to retain it.
Through the school, learners and their parents or guardians have the right to:
Requests are usually made through the learner's school. You may also contact our Information Officer directly using the details above.
If you believe a learner's safety or data has been put at risk, or you have seen inappropriate content on the platform, please contact us immediately at support@aiexplorers.co.za or on (+27) 79 110 0596. We treat safety reports as a priority.
In the event of a security compromise affecting learner personal information, we will act promptly to contain and investigate the incident and will notify the affected school(s) and, where required by POPIA, the Information Regulator, as soon as reasonably possible.
The Information Regulator (South Africa) can be reached at inforegulator.org.za.
We may update this page from time to time as our platform and the law evolve. Any changes take effect when posted here, and we encourage schools to review it periodically.
Questions about learner safety or POPIA? Contact our Information Officer at support@aiexplorers.co.za.
Last updated: July 29, 2026