Sustainability at Aiua

Aiua is a platform built on AI, which costs real money to run. Every reflection you score uses AI processing. Every voice synthesis uses compute. We believe in radical transparency about this, so we show you exactly what your usage costs and what your contributions are worth.

Each shared contribution is also automatically enriched with emotional analysis, topic tags, prompt alignment, language detection, and reading complexity at zero additional cost. This enrichment is extracted from the same scoring call you already paid for, so it increases the dataset's research value without increasing our AI expenses.

Your balance = contribution value − resource usage.

Contribution value

• Every point you earn: $0.01
• Every dollar you donate: $1.00 in contribution value

This valuation may increase as the dataset grows.

Resource usage

• AI scoring: ~$0.002 per submission
• Go Deeper rounds: ~$0.003 per round
• Voice synthesis: ~$0.015 per contribution
• Advisor conversations: ~$0.005 per message

A small negative balance is fine. Everyone has periods of using more than they contribute. We nudge gently at two thresholds before gating anything.

• -$0.50 (soft nudge): a dismissible note in the dashboard suggesting you share or donate.
• -$1.50 (persistent nudge): a persistent banner. You can still use all AI features.
• -$3.00 (hard gate): AI features temporarily pause. Your journal still works. Scoring, feedback, Go Deeper, advisor, and TTS are unavailable until you restore access.

AI features restore immediately when you:

• Share a reflection with the Aiua Archive (earns points)
• Make any donation to support the platform

Subscribers (any paid plan) never see the balance gate.

You can use Aiua as a free private journal with zero AI cost. In Settings, toggle off "Scoring and Feedback" and "AI Content". This disables every paid feature: scoring, feedback, Go Deeper, personalized prompts, text-to-speech, advisor, and spell check.

With all AI off, your balance stays at $0/$0. No gates ever trigger. You can still write daily, save to your encrypted journal, and read a cached community prompt. Turn features back on any time.

Entries submitted with scoring off cannot earn points later: they remain journal-only with total_score 0.

Each point currently represents $0.01 in contribution value. This reflects the early stage of the dataset. Individual data points only become highly valuable once the dataset reaches meaningful scale.

As the Aiua Archive grows in size, diversity, and research utility, this valuation may increase. At token launch, points convert to tokens at a rate determined by the dataset's assessed market value divided by total points awarded at that time.

Early contributors and those who help grow the platform through referrals may benefit from this appreciation, though this cannot be guaranteed and depends on dataset growth.

AI compute has an energy cost that varies based on which features you use. A zero-AI user has near-zero footprint. A heavy user with all features on uses more. The platform tracks AI usage per user and offsets it through tree planting.

Donations to Aiua fund tree planting through Digital Humani. Every $5 donation plants one tree. Each tree sequesters an estimated 10 to 25 kg of CO2 per year, varying by species and climate.

Our goal is to remain Carbon Negative ✓ from day one. Your personal AI usage and contribution offset are visible on your dashboard.

Building Aiua required extensive AI assistance for architecture, coding, testing, and content creation. We track this cost using the same methodology and 5x overhead multiplier applied to platform operations.

• Estimated development AI cost: approximately $1,125
• Estimated CO2 produced: approximately 6 kg
• Trees planted to offset: 5
• Current offset status: Carbon negative from day one

We apply the same 5x overhead multiplier to development costs as we do to platform operations, ensuring full transparency. The trees already planted through Digital Humani will sequester far more CO2 than the entire development process produced.