Ask A.P. Usage Policy
What the archive assistant does with your question, what it keeps, and how to read its answers.
What A.P. is
A.P. is the Society’s archive assistant. It answers questions about Avon Park’s history only from the Society’s own archive, and every answer shows the archive pages it used. If the archive does not cover a question, A.P. says so rather than guessing. It has no knowledge beyond the archive and is not a general-purpose chatbot.
What is sent, and where
To answer, the text of your question, up to 500 characters, is sent to an AI service, Azure OpenAI, run by Microsoft. In a continuing conversation, up to the last six exchanges are sent along with it so the assistant can follow what “it” and “that” refer to. That is all that is sent: no name, no email address, no IP address, no account and no device identifier travel with the question. Microsoft’s handling of that text is governed by its Azure OpenAI terms.
Limits
To keep the service affordable for a volunteer-run museum, each visitor may ask 20 questions an hour, and the site as a whole answers 300 questions a day. When either limit is reached the assistant says so and asks you to come back later.
To count questions per visitor, the server keeps a scrambled version of your network address in memory, made with a one-way hash and a secret key. It is never written to disk, never stored in its original form, and disappears when the service restarts. The form also carries a hidden field and a signed timestamp that deter automated use. Neither identifies you.
What is recorded
A question the assistant declines to answer is noted in the service’s operational log, first 80 characters only, so volunteers can see what the archive is missing and research it. Questions the assistant answers are not logged.
What stays on your device
Your conversations are saved in your browser’s local storage so you can return to them, up to 25 conversations of 10 exchanges each. Nothing is sent anywhere or synced between devices. The assistant offers a button to delete any single conversation and one to clear them all. Clearing your browser’s site data does the same.
Reading the answers
The archive is local history, and local history is revised as evidence arrives. Each cited item carries an evidence grade: corroborated, single-source, contested or tradition. A contested claim is one on which the sources disagree. Please check the cited page before relying on an answer, and tell the Society through the About Us page if you find an error.
Acceptable use
A.P. is for questions about Avon Park’s history. Please do not enter personal information about living people, your own or anyone else’s. Attempts to make the assistant ignore its instructions are refused and count against the limits above.