Your Photo Is Deleted After Generation: Privacy at Minivatar

Sending your photo to an online service is never a trivial move. A face is about as personal as data gets, and you are right to ask what happens to it once the upload is done. At Minivatar, the answer fits in one sentence: your photo is used to generate your figurine, then it is deleted. No dormant archive, no forgotten gallery. Here is the full journey, step by step.

A photo is personal

To turn a photo into a 3D figurine, you obviously need a photo. That is the whole point of Photo Mode: you upload a portrait, the AI picks up the facial features, and your figurine looks like you. But the very thing that makes the result so personal also makes the privacy question unavoidable.

It matters even more when you are preparing a gift. The photo you upload is often someone else's: a parent, a friend, your dog or your cat. You are spending someone else's trust, and you want a solid answer if they ask where that photo ended up.

The journey of your photo, step by step

The trip is short, and that is by design:

1. Upload. You send your photo from the configurator, in Photo Mode. It is transferred and processed securely.
2. Feature detection. The AI analyzes the face to capture what makes you recognizable, then applies the style and render you picked.
3. 2D preview. In under three minutes, you see what your figurine will look like and can adjust your choices.
4. Deletion. Once generation is complete, your photo is deleted. It has done its job, so it goes.

What travels on is your creation: after you validate, our team prepares the 3D model within 24 business hours, then your figurine is printed in high-definition SLA resin in our French workshop and shipped within 10 business days, in reinforced packaging with custom-fit padding.

Deleted after generation: what that actually means

This principle follows a simple idea at the heart of the GDPR: do not keep what you no longer need. Your photo is raw material, not an asset to be stored. Once the figurine is generated, keeping it would serve no purpose, so we do not keep it.

In practice, what stays at Minivatar is your figurine and its 3D model, in other words your order. What disappears is the original portrait. You can gift a figurine to your grandmother or immortalize your cat without wondering where their photo will be six months from now.

And yes, the rule applies to everyone: a photo of your dog or your cat follows exactly the same path as a human portrait, from upload to deletion. Whether you create a full-body figurine, a bust or an animal figurine, the principle does not change.

Rather not upload a photo at all? Imagination Mode

If you would prefer not to send any photo, there is a no-upload path: Imagination Mode. You describe your character in plain text, the AI creates it from scratch, and a reference photo remains entirely optional. It is the perfect route for bringing an invented hero, a tabletop NPC or an avatar to life.

And if you do upload a photo, one last tip for a great result: pick a sharp, well-lit portrait. Our guide the perfect photo for your 3D figurine walks you through choosing it.

A figurine, and no trace left behind

Your photo becomes a figurine, then it vanishes: that is the deal. Create your figurine in a few minutes, see how it works on our photo-to-3D-figurine page, or check the Pricing page to pick your size.