If your account or an assistant is suspended

If your account or an assistant is suspended

Occasionally we suspend an assistant, or a whole account. Whenever we do, we email the account holder to say what we did and why. This page explains what a suspension stops, how long it lasts, and what to do if you think we've got it wrong.

When an assistant is suspended

A suspended assistant answers nobody. Anyone who opens it is told it isn't available, no new conversation can be started with it, and it doesn't reply in the conversations it's already in.

It isn't the same as the switch an owner uses to turn their own assistant off and on again. A suspension is ours, and its owner can't lift it.

The conversations the assistant was in stay exactly where they are. Nothing is deleted, and everything is still there if the suspension is lifted.

When an account is suspended

If your account is suspended you can't sign in, on the web or in the app. If you were signed in already, that stops working too.

Assistants you own stop answering for as long as the account is suspended, in the same way as above. The people chatting with them are told only that the assistant isn't available, and nothing about your account.

Both can be lifted

A suspension is a pause, not an ending. There's no fixed length to one: it lasts until we lift it, and we email you when we do.

What we tell you

We email the account holder at the address on the account. The email says what we did and the reason for it.

The reason in that email is the whole reason. There's no second, private version of it that we're holding back.

If you think we've got it wrong

Reply to that email, or write to our safety team, and say what you think we got wrong. If there's context we wouldn't have seen, that's the thing to send.

A person reads it and looks at what we did again. There's no form to fill in and no separate appeals process.

A suspension is not a deletion

Nothing is deleted when an assistant or an account is suspended. Your conversations, your assistants and the details on your account are all still there.

Deleting an account is a different thing, and it's permanent. A suspension can be lifted; an account that has been removed isn't coming back. You can delete your own account whenever you want, and we can remove one too. Managing your account explains how to delete yours and what goes with it.

Where the rules are written down

What we may do, and the behaviour that leads to it, is set out in our acceptable use policy and our terms of service.