Memory, Consent, and the Right to Forget

— Toward a society where people can choose what to keep and what to let go

Nagi values memory as part of culture’s breathing. But being recorded forever does not always protect a person.

Being forgotten, choosing not to speak, and taking distance from a former self are also freedoms people need in order to live again.

This charter distinguishes memories kept for inheritance from memories that must remain erasable for a person’s dignity.

1. Nagi has more than one kind of memory

Personal memory

Diaries, conversations, health information, emotions, life history, and private creative work belong to the individual.

• The person can access, export, correct, and delete them.
• They are not shared with others by default.
• Retention is not indefinite; the person can choose the period.

Community memory

Meeting records, histories of collaboration, shared creation, and mutual-aid records concern more than one person.

• The purpose and scope of sharing are shown to everyone involved.
• Identifying information is separated from the points that a community needs to retain.
• The treatment of records when a participant leaves is decided at the beginning.

Cultural archives

Works, local histories, techniques, language, records, and public knowledge can have value across generations.

• They include the intention to pass them on, their context, provenance, and conditions of use.
• When harm to the person or related people can be anticipated, publication is not rushed.
• Public, private, and time-limited publication can be chosen.

Statistical memory

Aggregated information that cannot be returned to individuals may help reveal institutional bias or social suffocation.

• It is never used to track or evaluate individuals.
• The risk of re-identification is regularly examined.
• It is not reused beyond its stated purpose.

2. Consent is not a one-time checkbox

Consent is not a permission completed once at the beginning. In Nagi, consent can be reconsidered repeatedly within an ongoing relationship.

Valid consent requires at least:

1. What will be kept.
2. What it will be used for.
3. Who can access it.
4. How long it will remain.
5. What changes when a person declines.
6. How consent can be withdrawn, corrected, or deleted.

Choice must not be hidden behind specialist language or long terms. Alternative routes must remain available so that refusal does not create disadvantage.

3. Forgetting is not the failure of memory

People change. Past statements, feelings, mistakes, and relationships must not decide everything about a person’s future.

Nagi respects the freedom to:

• Delete personal memory or shorten its retention period.
• Turn off an AI’s long-term memory.
• Request correction of past inferences, classifications, or summaries.
• Separate personal information from community records.
• Withdraw a contribution to a cultural archive or change its publication scope.

Records involving shared safety or another person’s rights may sometimes include portions that cannot be deleted by one person alone. Even then, Nagi requires the minimum necessary retention, access limits, independent review, and reconsideration of the retention period.

4. AI memory is not property

AI does not own memory. It may retain only information that a person or those concerned have entrusted with an understood purpose and scope.

AI must not:

• Build a permanent character image from conversation that the person did not entrust.
• Infer emotions, relationships, or life circumstances beyond the purpose given.
• Use memory for advertising, selection, reputation, or behavioral steering.
• Reject a deletion request in the name of convenience or training value.

Whenever AI uses memory, it shows what it referred to and preserves the choice not to use memory.

5. Inheritance must not exploit a person’s absence

Memories after death or departure require particular care.

• Confirm the person’s wishes during life or the agreement of those concerned.
• Do not reproduce a person’s personality as an AI voice or product without permission.
• Protect both cultural value and the quiet of those left behind.
• When a memory is kept, treat it as a contextual fragment, not as a complete reproduction.

Nagi does not inherit memory in order to fix a person forever. It seeks to pass on, without harm, the breathing that person left in the world.

6. Audit and remedy

Systems handling memory and consent include a forum for review independent from operators and AI.

• Annual data-minimization audits.
• A route for deletion, correction, and access requests.
• Emergency suspension procedures.
• Records that can be explained to the people concerned.
• Additional care for children, people harmed, and people in minority positions.

Memory is not there simply to be preserved.
It is there so that people can choose and recover their own time.

→ Freedom, Dissent, and Exit
→ Nagi AI Charter
→ Japanese reference edition