MyRoshi’s teacher speaks from the classical literature of Zen and the tradition it grew from. This page says exactly which texts those are, how they are used, and what is deliberately not done with them.
The word roshi is a title given by a teacher to a student, in person, over years. MyRoshi has not been given it. The app claims no lineage, no transmission and no authorisation from any teacher, temple or school, and it is not endorsed by any. It is a piece of software that reads the old books and speaks about them. Koans, the precepts and ordination belong to a teacher you sit with face to face.
These are long-established works in the public domain, in most cases many centuries old:
This is the important part. A text can be ancient while a particular translation of it is recent and fully in copyright. MyRoshi therefore retells: the teacher renders every passage in its own plain words, names the source aloud, and may quote a short, famous line where it strikes — but it does not reproduce a modern copyrighted translation, and it is instructed never to invent a quotation, a story or an attribution.
If you hear a line you want to sit with properly, go to a published translation and a living teacher. A generated talk is a doorway, not a source of record.
In Settings › Notes & books you can give your teacher your own material — a book you are studying, your teacher’s talks, your own notes. That material is yours. It is stored encrypted like the rest of your practice, it is taught from before the classics where it bears on a concept, it is quoted and named aloud to you, and it is never shown to another user and never used to train any model.
It is the one place where a passage is used verbatim, and only ever in your talks. By uploading, you confirm you have the right to use that material for your own study.
The voices are synthesised on our own machines. They are not recordings of any teacher and do not imitate a specific living person. No talk in MyRoshi is spoken by a human being.
The open-source components MyRoshi is built on, and their licences, are listed separately at open-source licences.
If you believe a talk has reproduced protected material, misattributed a passage, or misrepresented a teacher or school, please write to admin@myroshi.com. Tell us what you heard and we will correct the instruction that produced it.