Last updated: August 2026
Psalms for Kids includes one artificial-intelligence feature: Bible Buddy, a small chat helper that answers kid-friendly questions about the Psalms, the Bible, and prayer. This page explains plainly how it works, because we think parents deserve to know before their child types anything.
What Bible Buddy is
Bible Buddy is a chat box that appears in the corner of the Site. A child types a question, and a reply comes back in a few seconds. It is not a real person, not a counsellor, not a teacher, and not a pastor. It is a computer program that predicts helpful-sounding text.
How it works
When a message is sent, it is passed to our own server, which forwards it to Google’s Gemini API along with a short set of instructions we wrote and the last few messages of the conversation, so the reply makes sense in context. The reply comes back the same way. Our access key stays on our server and is never exposed to the browser.
What we store
We do not save chat conversations to any database of ours. Messages are held only in the browser tab for the length of the conversation and are gone when the tab is closed or refreshed. We do not link chats to a name, an email address, or an account, because the Site has no accounts. Google processes the message in order to generate a reply and handles it under its own terms; we do not permit it to be used to build a profile of your child.
The safety rules it follows
Bible Buddy is given a fixed set of instructions on every request. It is told to:
- keep answers short, warm, and age-appropriate for roughly ages 5–12;
- stay on the Bible, the Psalms, prayer, and the Christian faith, and gently decline anything else;
- never ask for or encourage personal information — full name, address, school, phone number, photos, passwords, or location;
- point a child to a parent, guardian, teacher, or trusted adult straight away if they mention anything frightening, sad, or serious;
- give a reference such as “Psalm 23:1” and send the child to read the verse on our Psalm pages, rather than reciting scripture from memory;
- never produce anything scary, violent, or inappropriate, even if asked to do it “as a story”.
Message length and conversation length are both capped, and Google’s own content filters are set to their strictest setting for harassment, hate speech, sexually explicit material, and dangerous content.
What it can get wrong
No AI is perfect. Bible Buddy can misremember a detail, simplify something too far, or answer a question in a way you would word differently in your own family or tradition. Treat every answer as a starting point for a conversation with a grown-up, never as settled teaching. Scripture on this Site — the actual verse text on the Psalm pages — is fixed, verified, and never written by AI.
Turning it off and supervising it
Bible Buddy has to be opened deliberately; it never starts a conversation on its own and never makes a sound. If you would prefer your child not use it, blocking JavaScript for our domain in your browser or device controls will stop it loading, and the rest of the Site — all 150 Psalms, the stories, the games, and the printables — keeps working. We recommend children use it in a shared space with an adult nearby.
Where AI is not used
Bible Buddy is the only AI feature that a child interacts with. Psalm text, psalm titles, verse references, prayers, and quiz answers are authored and checked by people. We do not use AI to make decisions about you, to target advertising (there is none), or to profile visitors.
Contact
Questions or concerns about Bible Buddy are genuinely welcome — please reach us through the contact page. See also our Privacy Policy and For Parents page.