AI Notice

1What the service does, and what it is not

This service infers how a sole is joined to an upper from a photograph of the side of a shoe. This is not a test.

It has no contact with the shoe. It does not disassemble it, cut it, measure it, or subject it to any procedure. It looks at the appearance of a band a few millimetres tall in an image, and reports which of four constructions that band is consistent with. Nothing that follows from that reading is stronger than the reading itself.

2Some constructions cannot be identified from the outside at all

A Blake seam passes through the insole, the upper and the sole from inside the shoe. It runs beneath the insole and is not visible from any external angle, in any light, at any magnification. For a shoe made that way, the outside of the shoe does not carry the answer.

A decorative stitch can be sewn along a sole edge without passing through anything structural. From outside it can be indistinguishable from a seam that holds the shoe together. A heavily dressed and polished edge can fill in exactly the detail a reading depends on.

This is not an occasional edge case. It is a routine, expected outcome, and the service is built to report it rather than work around it.

3When a photograph is insufficient, the service says so

When a photograph does not establish the construction, the service says it cannot tell and asks for another photograph. It does not guess.

The reason is specific. Wrongly reporting that a shoe can be resoled sends its owner to a repairer for nothing — a wasted journey, and sometimes a shoe left behind for a week before the answer comes back. There is no equivalent cost to saying "this photograph doesn't show it". The two errors are not symmetrical, so the service is not built to treat them as if they were.

A result of "can't tell from this photo" is a complete, valid result. It is presented in the same way as the other four and is not marked as a failure.

4Resole counts are ranges, and nothing is promised

Where the service gives a number of possible resoles, it gives a range. That range describes what constructions of that kind generally allow. It is not a measurement of the shoe in your photograph and it is not a commitment.

No specific number of resoles is promised, and no lifespan in years, months, seasons or miles is promised anywhere by this service. How long a particular shoe lasts depends on the upper, on how it is worn, on how it is looked after and on what a repairer is willing to take on — none of which is in the photograph.

5The constructions are trade-offs, not a hierarchy

Cemented isn't a corner cut. Most trainers are made that way because a stitched welt would be heavy and stiff. It just isn't a shoe you resole.

Nearly all trainers, and a great many light shoes, are cemented or injection moulded. That is a considered choice for what those shoes have to do: a moulded sole is lighter, more flexible, watertight and more consistent than a stitched one. A welted sole is heavier and stiffer, and is a separable part. Each construction buys something and gives something up.

This service describes no construction as inferior to another, and its interface contains no ranking, no score, no rating and no colour scale running from good to bad. The four constructions are told apart by drawn pattern and by name.

6No repairer, no price, no judgement about whether to repair

This service recommends no repairer, gives no repair pricing, and makes no judgement about whether a repair is worthwhile. Repair costs vary enormously by location and are unknown to it.

Where it lists conditions under which repair tends to be worth considering, those are conditions and not conclusions. Weighing them is your decision, because you know the price you were quoted and how much you want the shoe. The service does not make that decision for you and does not tell you which way it would go.

7This service has nothing to do with feet

We look at how the shoe is built. Nothing about your feet — that's not something a photo of a shoe can tell anyone.

Stated in full, and separately from everything above: this service accepts no photographs of feet and asks nothing about them. It judges neither fit nor rubbing. It analyses no arch, no foot shape and no gait. It never infers walking style from sole wear. It offers no foot health, comfort or orthopaedic content of any kind, and it is not a step towards any of those things.

The upload surface has no field for a photograph of a foot, because the safest guardrail is a feature that does not exist. If a question of that kind is typed into the observation box, the service declines it and repeats this paragraph rather than answering partially.

Questions about your feet should go to a relevant professional. This service is not one and does not stand in for one.

8This service evaluates no brand

It makes no assessment of any brand, manufacturer or retailer, expresses no view about whether a price is justified by a construction, and does not say what a shoe at a given price ought to have been made of. Any brand name it recognises in an image or in your text is masked before it appears anywhere, including in images you share.

The Terms of Service prohibit using anything this service produces as a quality claim about a brand or product, as evidence in a return or complaint, or as a public statement of fact. Those restrictions follow directly from the limits described on this page.

9Uses that are prohibited

This service must not be used for medical purposes, nor for legal, financial, safety-critical, employment, credit, housing or judicial decision-making. It is a reading of an edge in a photograph, produced for the person deciding what to do with their own shoes.

10Your statutory rights

Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights.

This notice describes the nature and limits of what the service produces. It does not, and is not intended to, reduce the rights the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you in respect of digital content — that the service is of satisfactory quality, fit for a purpose you have made known to us, and as described.

If a result is wrong in a way that matters to you, tell us at support@kikiyok.shop. We will look at the photograph and the reading together and tell you what we find.