Ask any AI ad vendor four questions before you upload anything: is my footage used to train your models, who inside and outside your company can see it, can I delete it and have it actually gone, and can I get it back out in the format I put in. Our answers, for the record: footage is scoped to your account, it is not used to train models, it is not shared between accounts, and it is deletable. Every vendor should be willing to answer those four in writing, and the ones that answer vaguely are telling you something.
The four questions, and how to read the answers
| Question | A weak answer | A strong answer | Where to verify it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is my footage used to train your models? | "We may use data to improve our services" | "No. Your uploads are not used as training data, for our own models or a provider's" | Privacy policy, plus the terms covering the model providers behind the product |
| Who can see it? | "Only authorised personnel" | Named scope: your account only, no cross-account access, plus a stated internal access rule and how support access is logged | Privacy policy and security documentation |
| Can I delete it? | "Contact support and we will assist" | Self-service deletion, a stated retention window for backups, and confirmation that derived files go too | Privacy policy, and by testing it in a trial account |
| Can I export it? | "Downloads are available on paid plans" | Original files back, plus finished outputs at full quality with no watermark and no ongoing licence conditions | Terms of service and the product itself |
| Who owns the output? | Silence, or a broad marketing licence | You own it. Any use of your ads as vendor marketing requires your permission | Terms of service |
| Where is it stored, and by which sub-processors? | "Industry-standard cloud infrastructure" | A named list, updated, with a notification mechanism when it changes | Privacy policy or a sub-processor page |
The last two rows are the ones people forget and then regret. A broad licence to use your creative in vendor marketing means your ad can turn up in a competitor pitch deck, and an unnamed sub-processor list means you cannot answer your own customer's due diligence questionnaire.
Read the policy, not the marketing page. If a vendor's blog says one thing and its privacy policy says another, the policy is what binds them, and that holds for us too: our privacy policy is authoritative if it and this post ever disagree.
Why training use is the question that decides the rest
The other three questions have remedies. This one does not.
If footage is exposed and access is revoked, the exposure ends. If footage is stored in the wrong region, it can be migrated. If you want your data deleted, it can be deleted. But footage folded into model weights cannot be extracted afterwards. There is no un-training operation, so a yes to this question is permanent in a way none of the others are.
What that costs you depends on what is in your library, and most libraries contain more than people remember. Unreleased product footage from a shoot six months before launch. Packaging revisions that never shipped. Interior shots of a facility. Staff who have since left. Customer footage recorded under a release that covered advertising, not model training. If any of that becomes training data, it may influence output for other customers, which in a narrow category could mean output for your competitors.
Watch the wording rather than the sentiment. "We do not sell your data" is not an answer to this question. "We may use content to improve our services" usually is an answer, and the answer is yes. What you want is an explicit negative that also covers the model providers sitting behind the product, because a vendor that does not train on your footage but passes it to a provider that does has moved the problem rather than solved it.
Our answer: no. Footage you upload is not used to train models, ours or anyone else's, and it is not shared between accounts. The mechanics of how it is stored and processed are in our data and privacy documentation.
Deletion and export, in more detail
These two questions are really one question about whether you can leave.
Deletion should be self-service, and you should test it in a trial account before you commit a library to any vendor. Four things worth asking specifically. Does deleting a clip also delete the derived artefacts, meaning transcripts, tags, embeddings, thumbnails and proxies. Does deleting an account delete the footage or just close the login. How long do backups retain deleted material, since some retention window always exists and a vendor that claims zero is either wrong or not backing up. And can you delete selectively, which matters when one shoot's release expires and the rest of the library is fine.
Export is the practical measure of lock-in. You want your original files back, your finished ads at full quality, and ideally the metadata you generated along the way, since the tagging and transcription work is real value you paid for. Watermarks on export are a red flag for a paid tool, and an ongoing licence condition attached to output is worse.
Our answers: footage is deletable, exports are yours, and we do not watermark on any plan, including the free one. Editing, re-exporting and uploading footage cost no credits, which is deliberate, because charging people to get their work out is a bad way to keep customers. Our FAQ covers the account-level specifics.
What else to check, briefly
Five items that appear on every serious procurement questionnaire and are worth asking even if yours is a two-person team.
- Retention period for footage you have not deleted, and whether an inactive account is purged.
- Storage region, if you have a regulatory reason to care. Ask for it in writing rather than inferring it from a status page.
- Internal access rules, specifically whether support staff can view your library and whether that access is logged and time-limited.
- Breach notification, meaning what commitment exists on timing and to whom.
- A data processing agreement, if you are processing footage of identifiable people, which almost every brand library does.
For the specifics of ours, read the policy and the documentation rather than this page. We are deliberately not restating retention windows and sub-processor details in a blog post, because a blog post does not get updated when they change and a policy does.
The privacy question inside your own footage
One risk sits with you rather than the vendor, and it is the one we see cause real problems.
Your library almost certainly contains identifiable people: customers, staff, event attendees, people who happened to walk through a shot. When a machine can recombine that footage into hundreds of new variations, material that was filmed for one campaign in one market starts appearing in contexts nobody agreed to. A release that covered "use in social advertising for the spring campaign" does not obviously cover a German-language ad running eighteen months later.
Two practical habits. Keep releases and their expiry dates as part of your library metadata, not in a separate folder somebody forgets. And put people-related prohibitions into your brief as constraints, since a rule in the brief applies to every variation while a note in review applies to one.
Disclosure and limits: Genyad is our product. It works from footage you upload, which means there is no product-URL import and no product-feed or CSV rendering, so we are not scraping your site or ingesting your catalogue. There is no direct publishing to Meta or TikTok, so we do not hold your ad account credentials and we have no access to your campaign data. There are also no AI avatars or synthetic presenters, no static banner formats and no predicted performance scores. Fewer integrations means a smaller footprint of your data, which is a genuine trade: you upload and export yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is my video footage used to train AI models?
With us, no. Footage you upload is scoped to your account, is not used to train models and is not shared between accounts, and our privacy policy is the binding version of that statement. With other vendors you have to ask directly, and treat "we may use content to improve our services" as a yes until they say otherwise in writing.
Can I delete my footage from an AI ad tool?
You should be able to, self-service, with derived files such as transcripts and tags going too. Ours is deletable, and we would encourage testing deletion in a free account before uploading a full library anywhere. Ask about backup retention as well, since a short window always exists.
Who owns ads made by an AI tool from my footage?
You own your footage and your outputs, and any vendor claiming a broad licence to use your finished ads in their own marketing should be asked to narrow it to permission-based use. Check the terms of service rather than the marketing page. Watermarks or licence conditions attached to exports are a sign of lock-in.
What should I ask an AI ad vendor before uploading anything?
Four things: whether uploads are used for training, who can see them, whether deletion is self-service and complete, and whether you can export originals and outputs freely. Then two follow-ups, which are the sub-processor list and whether the vendor may use your creative in its own marketing. Ask for answers that point at a policy document rather than a reassurance.