AI Disclosure & Policy
The short version: the voices in the course are synthetic. Some of the translations were produced by machine and then reviewed by people, and some have not been reviewed yet — we say which. The Virtual Teacher is an AI chatbot run on OpenAI, and what you type to it is sent to OpenAI. No AI decides anything about your account, nothing you do is used by us to train a model, and we make no claim that AI will get you a job, a licence, or a passed inspection.
1. Why this page exists
Companies get into trouble over AI in two ways: using it without telling anyone, and claiming it does more than it does. We would rather write down exactly what is running. This page is part of our agreement with you and sits alongside the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy.
2. The course audio is synthetic speech
Every speaker button in the course plays AI-generated audio. The text of the lesson is sent to ElevenLabs (United States), which synthesizes a voice reading it, and we cache the result so the same phrase is not re-synthesized. If that audio is unavailable, the button falls back to the synthetic voice built into your browser.
- The voices are not recordings of a real person speaking those words. They are generated.
- They are pronunciation models, not a certified standard. A synthetic voice can get a regional pronunciation, a proper noun, or a piece of trucking jargon wrong.
- We send the lesson text for synthesis. We do not send your name, your email, your account identifier, or anything else about you.
3. Some translations are machine-produced
Road English ships in English plus eight language editions. The English course and the Spanish edition have been reviewed by people. The remaining seven editions — Russian, Ukrainian, Hindi, Punjabi, Arabic, Urdu, and Croatian — were produced with machine translation and are being reviewed language by language; where that review is not finished, treat the translation as a study aid and the English as the authoritative term.
This matters most for regulatory vocabulary. A roadside inspection is conducted in English, so the course teaches the English term first and gives the translation underneath as support. If a translated phrase and the English phrase disagree, the English phrase is the one to learn.
4. AI is used in authoring, behind a locked door
Our internal lesson editor can draft and revise lesson text with a large language model (currently OpenAI's API). That surface requires a client certificate and is not reachable by learners. What it produces is a draft for our authors, and nothing appears in the course until an author saves it. Authors normally read each change first, but bulk edits and bulk translations can be saved in one step without a lesson-by-lesson read, so machine-produced text — including the translations Section 3 lists as not yet reviewed — can be in the course before a person has checked it. The authoring tools send no learner data to that model — they send lesson content only. The Virtual Teacher, below, is different.
4A. The Virtual Teacher is an AI chatbot
Enrolled learners can chat with a Virtual Teacher. It is not a person: its replies are generated by a large language model from OpenAI (United States), guided by excerpts of our lessons.
- What is sent to OpenAI: each message you type, up to your last ten messages and replies in that conversation, the course language, and the lesson excerpts. Your latest messages are also sent to OpenAI's embeddings service to pick those excerpts. We do not send your name, email address, or account identifier.
- Anything you type reaches OpenAI, so do not type personal information into the chat. A notice under the chat box says so.
- We do not store the text of your conversation on our servers. It stays in your browser tab until you close it. OpenAI's handling is described in the Privacy Policy.
- The teacher marks practice answers right or wrong to award XP, streaks and badges, which we keep with your account. That marking is for motivation only and never affects your access, price, or any record outside the Virtual Teacher.
- Its answers can be wrong. The lessons, and the English phrases in them, are the authority.
5. Pronunciation practice uses your browser, not us
The pronunciation exercises use the speech-recognition feature built into your browser. In Chrome and Edge, that feature uploads the recording to the browser vendor's own servers to convert it to text; in other browsers it may run locally or not exist at all. Either way:
- We ask before the microphone is used the first time, and you can decline and still complete every lesson.
- Road English never receives, hears, or stores your voice. We receive no audio and no transcript.
- We do not create a voiceprint, we do not use voice to identify you, and we collect no biometric identifier of any kind.
- The comparison that scores your attempt runs in your browser and is discarded immediately.
6. No automated decisions about you
No AI system at Road English decides whether you get an account, what you pay, whether you receive a refund, or whether your access is suspended. The one thing AI does mark is your practice answers to the Virtual Teacher (Section 4A), and that marking only awards XP, streaks and badges. There is no profiling and no scoring of you as a person. Two non-AI, rule-based checks act on an account by themselves, both described in Section 9 of the Privacy Policy: the limit of two active sign-ins, and the anti-scraping lock, which a person reviews on request. Apart from those and the ordinary mechanics of payment and enrollment expiry, account decisions are made by a human.
7. We do not train models on you
We do not use your personal information, your lesson progress, your messages to us, or your voice to train, fine-tune, or evaluate any AI model, and we do not license it to anyone else for that purpose. The only thing of yours that reaches an AI provider is what you type to the Virtual Teacher, which goes to OpenAI without your name, email or account identifier; OpenAI's API terms state that it does not use API data to train its models by default. Everything else we send to AI providers is our own lesson text.
In the other direction, our own course is not free training material: see Section 3 of the Copyright & Takedown Policy for our opt-out against text and data mining.
8. What we do not claim
We do not claim that Road English is "AI-powered" in any sense beyond what is described above, and we do not claim that using it will produce any particular result. AI does not teach you the course — the course teaches you the course, and AI reads it aloud, helped draft and translate it, and powers the optional Virtual Teacher you can practise with.
In particular, Road English does not promise, and cannot promise, that you will pass a CDL or licence exam, pass a DOT roadside inspection, obtain or keep employment, obtain immigration status, or satisfy any legal or regulatory requirement. See the Disclaimer.
9. AI makes mistakes, and so do we
Synthetic speech mispronounces things. Machine translation gets idioms wrong. If you find an error in a lesson — audio, translation, or anything else — email [email protected] with Course Correction in the subject line. We would rather fix it than have you learn it wrong.
10. Changes
If we add an AI feature that touches your data, changes what we send to a provider, or affects a decision about your account, we will update this page before that feature ships, and we will say so where the law requires it. We may otherwise update this page at any time by posting a revised version with a new "Last updated" date.
11. Contact
Dextrata Software Inc. — [email protected]