Can AI help you write your life story? What to check, what to keep and what UK law says

Before you read: a conflict of interest

Chutex offers a service in this area, which is described at the end of the page. That is a conflict of interest, so this guide does not compare tools, does not rate any product and does not say that one approach is better than another. It sets out questions you can ask of any tool, ours included, and what UK sources say about copyright and personal data.

What can AI do for a life story, and what can it not?

An AI tool is software that produces text or speech in response to what you give it. For a life story, that can mean three different jobs, and it helps to keep them apart.

None of the three can supply a memory. If a tool offers a detail you do not recognise, such as a name, a street or a date, treat it as a suggestion that needs your confirmation. A tool that fills a gap smoothly can leave a false detail in your book that looks as if it came from you.

There is also a limit that is not about accuracy. The point of a life story is that it comes from the person who lived it. An AI can help you get words onto the page. It cannot decide what mattered to you.

What should you keep in your own words?

A simple rule works well: let a tool help with the structure, and write the heart of each piece yourself. The parts that carry the most weight are the ones to protect.

• The moments with feeling in them: the day you left home, the night someone was born, the argument you still think about.
• Your sayings and your way of talking. Read a passage aloud and ask whether you would say it.
• Judgements about other people. These are the sentences with the most at stake.
• Anything you would be unhappy to see attributed to you if you had not written it.

If you let a tool draft passages, read them as a sceptical editor. Check every name, date and place against what you know, and look for details that appear from nowhere. Then rewrite the passage until it sounds like you.

If you would rather write everything yourself, our life story guide gives you a five-theme template with prompts, and our memoir guide covers outline and craft.

What happens to your stories and photographs? A checklist before you share

Anything you give a tool is something you have shared with a service. What the service does with it depends on the service, and this page does not make claims about any tool’s retention, deletion or storage, because the sources read did not cover them. The checklist below helps you decide what to share and gives you questions to ask.

1. What would you not want repeated? Leave out anything private that you would not tell a stranger.
2. Who else is in the story? Think about the details of other people, especially children and people who have not agreed.
3. Where do the stories go? Look for plain wording on who can see them and how long they are kept.
4. Can you take your stories out? Look for a way to download or copy what you have written.
5. Can you have them deleted? Look for the route to ask, and who to ask.
6. Is it a family-only project? That affects which rules apply, as the next section explains.

What the ICO says that may help

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says personal data used in a purely personal or household activity, with no link to a professional or commercial activity, falls outside the UK GDPR. Its example is writing to friends and family.⁵ A private family book fits that description. A project run as a business does not.

If an organisation holds your personal information, you can ask it for copies. Organisations usually have one month to respond to a request of this kind.⁷ You can also ask it to delete your data in listed circumstances, for example when it no longer needs the data or you withdraw consent. It then has one calendar month to respond, extendable by up to two further months.⁶ The ICO adds that an organisation can refuse erasure in some cases, including where keeping the data is necessary for freedom of expression and information, which covers journalism and artistic and literary purposes.⁶

That ICO deletion page was flagged as under review when it was read, so check its current wording. Guidance from the ICO written for individuals about typing personal stories into an AI tool for private use was not found in the sources read, so this page makes no claim about it.

Who owns the text? What UK law says so far

This is general information from public sources, not legal advice, and the law is under review. Start with the settled part. GOV.UK says copyright in written work arises automatically in the UK, with no fee and no register of copyright works.⁴

For a computer-generated literary work, section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 says the author is taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken.¹ Section 12 says copyright in a computer-generated work expires 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it was made.²

Two cautions follow. First, this page does not say how those words apply to text from a chatbot or an app, and nothing in the sources read settles that. Second, the law may change. In March 2026 the UK Government published a report on copyright and AI. As read for this page, it says UK law protects computer-generated works created without a human author, and it proposes that this specific protection be removed while AI-assisted works stay protected.³ Treat that as a proposal, not as law.

The same report says that where an AI output reproduces a substantial part of existing copyright works without a licence, both the user and the model provider may be liable for infringement.³ Only the first 100,000 characters of a much longer page were read, and no statement on who owns an AI output was found in that part.

The practical point is modest. If you want to use AI, keep your own notes and your own rewriting, so that the finished text is clearly yours. If someone else is involved, such as a ghostwriter, agree ownership in writing before work starts. The Society of Authors’ position on AI was not read for this guide.

When is a human writer or a family member a better choice?

Sometimes the right answer is a person. A person can sit in a room, notice that you have gone quiet and change the subject.

• When the story is painful or private, and you want to choose each listener.
• When you find screens or typing difficult. At least one local Age UK branch, Oldham, ran a volunteer-led life story service when read on 19 October 2026: volunteers talk through memories each week and a printed book is compiled.⁸ This page does not say that every branch does.
• When a relative wants to be involved. A conversation with a grandchild can matter as much as the finished page.
• When you want one clear author. A paid writer’s ownership terms should be written down before work starts.

For a list of questions to use with an older relative, see our questions to ask grandparents guide. For a researched family project, see our family history book guide.

Where Memory fits

Chutex offers Memory, a service in preparation in which Aria, an AI, helps a person tell their life story, keeps the memories they choose to share and can prepare a book they review together. The service has its own page on this site: Chutex Memory. Memory gives no diagnosis. It is not a health professional and does not replace one.

As declared at the top of this page, Chutex has an interest in this topic. Apply the checklist above to Memory as you would to any other tool, and judge it on its own page.

Frequently asked questions