Mero is being built right now. Waitlist is open.
Ethical AI at Mero

The kind of AI worth building

AI isn’t going away. It’s already in your phone, your search bar, your kid’s homework. Pretending otherwise doesn’t protect anyone. The real question is what kind of AI gets built, and who it’s built for.

Most of it is built to hold your attention. We think that’s the wrong goal. A single mom doesn’t need one more thing demanding her focus. She needs something that gives some back.

So we started somewhere different: what would make you more present with your kids, not less? What would make you feel steadier, not more dependent? Every decision we make starts there.

  • We build AI that strengthens people.
  • We build AI that creates more human connection, not less.
  • We build AI that gives mothers back their time.
  • We build AI that protects dignity.

Technology should make us more human — not less.

The framework

Ten principles. Every decision.

01

Human-first design

Every feature starts with a person, not a feature idea. If it doesn’t make your life better, we don’t ship it.

02

Technology serving relationships

We measure success by whether you’re more present with the people you love, not by how long you stay on the app.

03

Privacy by design

Your family’s information is yours. We build with the least data necessary, protected as if it were our own.

04

Child protection

Kids didn’t choose this technology. Every choice we make accounts for them first, even when it’s not the easiest choice for us.

05

Parent empowerment

We’re here to back your judgment, not replace it. You know your kids. Mero just makes the load lighter.

06

Transparency

You should always be able to understand what Mero is doing and why. No hidden logic, no fine print doing the real talking.

07

Environmental responsibility

Intelligence has a cost. We build lean, use only the computation a task actually needs, and account for the footprint we leave.

08

Responsible use of data

We collect what serves you, not what serves us. Your data is never sold, and never used to manipulate you.

09

Accessibility

Support shouldn’t be a luxury. We build for real budgets, real schedules, and real limits on time and energy.

10

Long-term trust over short-term growth

We’d rather grow slowly and keep your trust than grow fast and lose it. Trust is the only metric that outlasts a quarter.

The ethics review

Nine questions. No exceptions.

Before anything ships, it goes through the same nine questions. No feature is too small to ask them, and no deadline is a reason to skip them.

  1. Does this reduce a mother’s mental load, or add to it?
  2. Does this make her relationships stronger, or does it stand in for them?
  3. Is AI actually necessary here, or is there a simpler way?
  4. Can this be done with less computation, and less impact?
  5. Could this be used to manipulate behavior, even by accident?
  6. Does this increase her dependence on us, or her confidence in herself?
  7. Does this protect children, fully and without exception?
  8. Would we proudly explain exactly how this works, to anyone who asked?
  9. Would we hand this to our own families without hesitation?

If we can’t answer yes to all nine, it doesn’t ship. That’s not a policy. That’s the point of building this at all.

Privacy philosophy

Mero works for you — not on you.

Trust is the most valuable thing we have, and we know it’s earned in the details, not the marketing. Here’s how we think about your data, plainly and without asterisks.

Minimal by design

We collect what helps you, and nothing we don’t need.

You own your data

It’s yours — you can access it, take it with you, or ask us to delete it, anytime.

Consent that means something

We ask before we act, in plain language, not buried in fine print.

Transparency, always

If we’re using your data, you’ll know how and why.

Secure by default

Your information is protected with the seriousness it deserves.

No manipulative profiling

We don’t build a shadow version of you to sell against.

Never sold, period

Your personal data is not a product we trade in.

Extra care for your children

Information about your kids gets the highest protection we’re able to give it.

The full plain-language details of what our waitlist collects are in the privacy policy.

Environmental commitment

An honest accounting of our impact.

AI takes real computing power, and that has a real environmental cost — we’re not going to pretend otherwise. We’d rather tell you what we actually do than make a claim we can’t stand behind.

  • We avoid unnecessary computation, running only what genuinely serves you.
  • We make thoughtful infrastructure decisions, weighing impact alongside cost and performance.
  • We adopt efficiency gains as newer, leaner models become available.
  • We choose responsible technology partners wherever that choice is practically available to us.
  • We continually review our impact, so this stays a practice and not a one-time promise.

We won’t call ourselves carbon neutral, green, or net zero — those aren’t claims we can back up yet. What we can promise is continual improvement, built through transparency and honest engineering.

Mero does not replace parenting.
Mero creates more room for parenting.

  • Fewer forgotten tasks.
  • More family dinners.
  • More bedtime stories.
  • More laughter.
  • More presence.
  • Less overwhelm.

That’s the whole point.

From the founder

A letter from Kirby

I didn’t start Mero because I saw a gap in the market. I started it because I was doing this alone, and my kids’ father wasn’t showing up, and I needed something in my corner that actually was.

That’s why ethics isn’t a slide in a deck for me. It’s not a policy someone wrote to keep lawyers happy. It’s personal, because I am the person this has to work for — and so is every mom reading this.

Right now I’m also studying ministry at Starr King School for the Ministry, which sounds like a strange thing to mention in a product update. But it’s where I sit with the harder questions — about humanity, technology, justice, community — the ones that don’t have clean answers. Those questions shape Mero as much as any engineering decision does. Maybe more.

Here’s what I believe, plainly: ethical AI shouldn’t be designed only by engineers. It should be shaped by parents, ethicists, educators, caregivers, faith leaders, researchers, policymakers, and the communities whose lives it actually touches. Rooms full of people who look like the ones building it aren’t rooms that can see everything. Mine can’t either, alone. That’s the whole point of building this in the open, slowly, with people who aren’t afraid to tell me I’m wrong.

We’re building Mero right now. The waitlist is open, the first 1,000 people get a month free, and we’re capping founding membership around 2,000 — small on purpose, so this stays a relationship and not a funnel.

I won’t measure this by how powerful the technology gets. I’ll measure it by whether families feel more present, more supported, more hopeful because it exists.

That’s it. That’s the whole bet.

Public advocacy

Helping shape AI, not just using it.

If AI is going to shape the future of families, we have a responsibility to help shape AI. That’s a responsibility we intend to grow into, not just gesture at.

  • We participate in public conversations about AI’s role in family life.
  • We contribute a thoughtful, lived-in perspective on AI ethics — not a theoretical one.
  • We support regulation that holds this industry accountable.
  • We encourage transparency across AI, not just within Mero.
  • We collaborate with organisations working toward the same ethical ground we’re standing on.
Honest answers

Questions worth asking us.

Is Mero trying to replace parents?

No — the opposite. Mero handles the mental load so you have more room to actually parent: more patience, more presence, more of you left at the end of the day. It’s built to hold what you’re carrying, not to hold your kid instead of you.

What does Mero do with my data?

Our philosophy is simple: your data is yours, it’s used to serve you, and it is never sold. We collect what we need to make Mero genuinely helpful and nothing more, and we’ll always tell you plainly what that is and why.

Isn’t AI bad for the environment?

Honestly, yes — AI uses real energy, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise or slap a green badge on it and call it solved. What we can do is be honest about that cost, build efficiently, and hold ourselves to real commitments instead of vague ones. We’d rather say too little here than overclaim.

How do you decide what features to build?

Every feature goes through an ethics review before it’s even a candidate for shipping. If it doesn’t pass — if it exploits attention, blurs consent, or isn’t clearly good for a mom and her kids — it doesn’t ship, no matter how good it is for engagement or growth.

Is Mero safe around my kids?

Child protection is a principle, not an afterthought — kids’ data gets a higher bar of protection than anyone else’s in the system, full stop. Any Child Companion feature will be opt-in and Mom-controlled, meaning it exists only if you turn it on, and you set the boundaries.

Why should I trust an AI company?

You shouldn’t, not on words alone — we wouldn’t either. Watch what we do instead of what we say: we’re staying small on purpose, capping founding membership around 2,000 so real people can reach a real person, not a support queue.

Will Mero make me dependent on it?

The goal is to reduce your dependence on chaos, not create dependence on Mero. Before we ship anything, we ask ourselves one question: does this give her back her life, or just make her need us more? If it’s the second one, we don’t build it.

Built like this, on purpose.

The measure of Mero will never be how powerful the technology becomes. It will be how much more present, supported, and hopeful the families who use it feel.

Your information is never sold. How your data is protected